


Buffy Drabbles from Open on Sunday

by Meltha



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Drabbles, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, openonsunday, pretty much every pairing possible, pretty much every situation possible, really I swear I have a life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-06 11:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 38,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a, well, rather frighteningly vast collection of my drabbles from the Livejournal community Open on Sunday since 2003.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2003-2004 Drabbles

**Author's Note:**

> No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is made from these works of fanficiton.
> 
> These are in semi-reverse order, with the newest batch at the bottom of each page. Individual challenges are in normal order. I apologize that I needed to reload this, but something bizarre happened with my coding and things were repeating/triple and quadruple spacing, so this should be fixed now.

November 21, 2004:

Journeys

The Hard Road

“It’s all about the journey,” Giles had mumbled in Xander’s dream. Sometimes he thought that was the only part of it that did make sense.

Xander’s journey hadn’t been a happy one. There were few roses and lucky horseshoes, and a lot of dead friends and knocks to the head. Sometimes that journey left his soles bleeding, and sometimes it was his soul covered in blood.

But he kept putting one foot in front of the other, continuing his journey with nothing but a stubborn determination not to let the bad guys win. And that’s what it was all about.

 

November 14, 2004:

Changes

Things change quickly after you’re dead, or so Jesse thought. Until high school, he, Willow, and Xander had dealt with their strange parents, but mostly, they played: swinging higher than the rooftops, sailing high and low on the teeter-totter, careening down grass-covered hills on their bikes. They had laughed for years at a stretch, it seemed.

After he died, Jesse watched them. He saw Xander afraid to love anyone. He saw Willow’s powers grow strong. He saw Buffy fight every night, and Cordelia turn from a spoiled child into a woman.

But their laughter seemed to have died with him.

Between

Darla doesn’t understand where she is. She had no soul. When she drove the stake into her heart, she should have dissolved into nothing, dust lost in the rain of the alley where her son was born, rinsed clean, paving the way for forgetfulness.

The fade to black didn’t happen. She stayed in the background, silent and unable to touch, but watching Connor’s life unfold before her. Sometimes she wonders if there’s been a mistake and she’s in heaven. But then, when she sees her child in pain, confused, tormented by demons he inherited, she knows watching can be hell.

Monsters in the Sky

The Powers That Be. They aren’t particularly happy with the name they have been given, but then human intellect couldn’t be expected to create a proper title for them.

They’re not quite sure why they like playing with the humans so much. They move them around like pieces on a chessboard. Angel is one of their favorites. They never tire of watching him try to battle his way beyond the little squares of his playing board, confused and tired. It amuses them, for now.

But eventually, they know they will tire of the game and simply sweep the board clean.

Motherly Advice

“Buffy, what are you doing?” Joyce says in exasperation for the thousandth time. Her daughter doesn’t listen. Some things haven’t changed with her death.

To her Buffy is still the seven-year-old who tried to vacuum the drapes while they were hanging up and nearly burned down the house. It’s hard to accept her child has repeatedly saved the world on a yearly basis.

But she sees other things, too. She sees self-doubt leaking from Buffy’s pores and poisoning those around her. She sees an old woman in a young body. Most of all, she sees someone terrified of being herself.

Forgotten

Tara hates being here sometimes, but she can’t let herself be anywhere else. When the gunshot ripped her out of her body, she knew what would come as surely as if she were looking at a map. She watched Willow fall, using her death as an excuse, tumbling over the edge, then being pulled back again.

She’d cried tears of relief that day.

But time passed, and while she watched, things changed. She saw Kennedy arrive, and there was the map laid before her again. It was like a train wreck. She wanted to turn her face away, but couldn’t.

November 7, 2004:

Illness

Syllogism Confused

At first Spike didn’t believe it was happening. It went against every rule of logic. Vampires are dead. The dead don’t get sick. Ergo, vampires don’t get sick. Drusilla was simply having one of her spells.

But she lost weight, and her appetite disappeared. One night she collapsed in the middle of a street and was nearly run over by a truck, and he knew the truth.

It wasn’t the same illness, but it was leading down the same road. After his mother, he swore it wouldn’t happen again. If it took moving earth and hell, his Dru would live.

 

October 17, 2004:

Shakespeare

Similarities

Giles is gazing intently into an ancient volume, eyes sweeping over the page with dizzying speed, searching for the phrase or woodcut or footnote that holds the answer to the riddle Buffy must solve.

Spike regards him while trussed up like a Christmas turkey on the sofa, gagged because he was serenading the Watcher with the Sex Pistols’ greatest hits. He’s reminded of Prospero ordering everything for the benefit of his beloved child Miranda. Spike doesn’t want to admit those thoughts can fill his mind, but he knows that somewhere in a corner of his mind, William is still alive.

 

October 10, 2004:

Slayers Other Than Buffy

The Test

Jane couldn’t understand why she had become weak. Churning butter tired her, and carrying water buckets made her ache. The last thing she recalled was lying down to sleep, her Watcher studying her from the doorway.

She awakened in darkness, the dank smell of earth surrounding her. Why was she in the cellar? She climbed the steps and pulled on the doorhandle. It was locked. Turning around, she saw yellow eyes flickering to life.

Two hours later, the Council unlocked the door and sent the newly-called Slayer to dispatch the vampire. Jane’s eighteenth birthday had passed, but she had not.

Remnant

Berta should have been dead. Plague had destroyed her tiny village like a wave of molten death. No one was left alive save her. Travelers had seen her hiding in shadows that smelled of decay. They called her a witch child, shuddered piously, and passed by.

When the gray-cloaked Council found her wandering the town’s empty streets, they knew better. The wide-eyed, silent child of five had the birthmark, and it told all.

Ten years later she died in battle. She had slain over fifty vampires, killed nearly thirty demons, and stopped Armageddon.

She had never uttered a single word.

Turning Sides

Cora believed good and evil never overlapped. One side was honor and victory through her or those called after. The other was filth and defeat in this life and the next.

She was sent to Chicago to slay a pair of vampires. As the smoky jazz club pulsed, the two swayed obliviously together, easy marks. He smiled at the female with an adoration Cora couldn’t doubt.

The stake fell from her fingers.

Years passed before the Council learned Spike and Drusilla survived. Cora told the couple of their supposed demise, and they’d all laughed while hunting for their next victims.

 

September 19, 2004:

Telling Secrets

Unthinkable

Of all the things he’d thought she might say, this wasn’t one of them. He’d considered a thousand variations of hell, or even the void, the ultimate destruction of those she’d lost. He’d never expected to hear she’d been in heaven, only to be yanked out by selfish kids barely out of their teens.

But she had trusted him with it. In that moment, he knew both heaven and hell.

 

Unlovable

He knew now why she trusted him. Telling him was like telling a ghost, a thing, no more dangerous than confiding in her teddy bear. He had become her one relief because to her, whatever she did, whatever she said, dissolved into nothingness the moment she stepped back into the light.

He was a figment of her imagination. A figment that could stroke her hair or drive her body crazy enough to block out the world for hours at a time, but nothing more.

Sometimes, he wished he really was nothing but a thing. Things don’t weep in the dark.

 

Unstoppable

The world was ending. Again. The repetitiveness of Armageddon would be comic if it weren’t for the blonde staring at him with eyes too large in the darkness of a bedroom that wasn’t hers, wasn’t his, wasn’t anyone’s anymore.

Her sister, her mentor, her friends, the refugees she’d taken into her own home had lost their faith in her. They’d turned her out because she hadn’t been perfect. She’d failed.

As he held her, he saw through the self-assurance she wore like those ridiculous shoes: painful, but necessary for the image. He saw her deepest secret: her uncertainty in herself.

 

Unwanted Secrets

The confessional walls were close around her, the darkness reminding her horribly of the dark fate her soul could expect if this curse wasn’t lifted from her. She had prayed through more nights than she could count, fasted until she had fainted from hunger, heaped humiliations on her spirit and flesh, but it only seemed to make it worse.

Here, in the holy church, she could at last safely relieve her soul of its burden. This was her last bastion of hope. Drawing a shuddering breath, Drusilla crossed herself and told her secrets to the one who would damn her.

 

Misunderstood Secrets

Angelus thought she was being silly again. She could tell. His mouth always quirked when she said or did something he couldn’t understand. Grandmummy had stakes and sunlight dancing around her head, aimed at her, but she pretended not to see it.

Only William understood her. He knew the stars spoke to her, telling her the secrets of the universe, showing her in their light the twisted cords of fate that bound the world together and split them apart in turn.

“If Drusilla says a kitty and hawk are going to make brothers fly someday, I believe her,” he said.

 

Ugly Secrets

She’s been saying horrid things to the stars, but then the stars said horrid things to her first. They whisper about Grandmother-Daughter, turned to ash by a baby boy; Daddy is lost and found and lost and found and hates his loving childe and will never come home; sweet Spike’s eyes burn with flame as he’s turned to cinders through service to the beast who has scrawled her name on his heart in blood, sex and soul.

Drusilla looks at the shrieking stars, and she knows Mother was right. To know secrets that shouldn’t be told is to be cursed.

 

September 13, 2004:

Transportation

It Must Be Love

“We’re fleeing from a god,” Spike asked, “in a Winnebago?”

“Don’t start,” she snapped. “We’re not stealing a sports car.”

“Oh, come on! That thing should be driven by an old geezer!”

“You are an old geezer,” she said icily.

“Fine,” he said, defeated. “I’ll get it out of here and meet you in an hour.”

She left. He wouldn’t tell her he couldn’t steal something that big this fast without more trouble than they could afford. Sighing, he walked into the manager’s office.

“The decrepit Winnebago for a vintage Desoto,” he offered grimly to the first salesman he saw.

 

September 5, 2004:

Faith

By Any Other Name

Faith used to wonder why her mother had chosen her name. There were thousands of other names in the world, yet she had picked one that screamed irony.

Her mother had never darkened the doorway of a church, never spoken a word about God or mentioned that whole “do unto others” thing. Instead, there was booze and needles and men who never stayed long and beatings for reasons that weren’t reasons at all.

In jail, after months of thought, she came to a conclusion. Whatever her mother’s intentions were, the name fit. Faith eventually learned to have faith in herself.

 

Expulsion

The cross burned deeply into his flesh, but the pain couldn’t obliterate decades of acts that damned him. Buffy’s face appeared before his eyes, half-hidden in shadows.

“Kill yourself. He doesn’t want you. He has no use for you. No one ever has,” she whispered. “It’s the only rest you’ll ever find.”

Something clicked in the back of his mind, something from childhood screaming this wasn’t right. With an immense effort, he pulled his seared skin from the cross and stared at her.

“Get thee behind me,” he croaked through lips covered in his own blood, and the thing departed.

 

August 29, 2004:

Counting Crows Song Titles

The Quest Series

Holiday in Spain

Buffy had both won and lost. Her life was always like that. She’d saved the world, but she’d lost her home. The place she had fought for was now a hole, the definition of nothing.

Sometimes a flash of guilty happiness fluttered in her heart at that, but more often sadness descended, insulating her from the world.

For now, she was in Madrid, listening to the unknown language like continuous background music. She was on vacation. If she had no home to return to when it was over, it only meant she belonged anywhere as much as the next place.

 

Sullivan Street

The London house was squeezed between two others, so thin it barely seemed wide enough for a broom. Then again, there had never been much width to Buffy. Sometimes she thought she was trying to be so small no one could expect her to carry the burden.

The Council was rebuilt two blocks from where she and Dawn now lived. New Slayers arrived every day, but each had the same look of confusion and, after an interpreter had explained what the blonde girl behind the reception desk had done, anger.

It was never home, and she was glad to leave.

 

Raining in Baltimore

It felt like time to return to America, to coffee instead of tea and footballs that weren’t round. Maryland seemed as good a place as any. The Council had reported an increase in demons, and Buffy had herself transferred. Dawn stayed in London, in college now, her face accusatory. Buffy knew what she was thinking: my sister, the grown-up runaway.

Buffy found she didn’t care anymore.

It seemed unfair after countless days of London rain she arrived in Baltimore to a series of thunderstorms, leaving her apartment gray. The pattering on the glass was almost as lonely as she was.

 

Miami

Baltimore had been too quiet, she told herself. After slaying the demons, she stayed less than five months. Although Baltimore was larger than Sunnydale had been, she felt too separate, isolated. She needed something warmer.

She moved to Miami, a sun-drenched city stalking to a Latin beat. The clubs pounded away until sunrise, and she found many companions who told her she was hot, sexy, fiery, a string of them countless as beads in a broken pearl necklace.

When she found herself standing on the beach one dawn, wishing it would burn her to cinders, she grabbed her suitcase again.

 

Omaha

Nebraska was so flat that it looked like it had been ironed. She had an actual house again, her first since Sunnydale, complete with a picket fence and two rosebushes outside the front door.

It took her only a couple weeks to kill the roses, but she left them there, prickly, thorny sculptures of brown, dead twig and crumbled leaf. She’d never gotten the chance to see them bloom, and sometimes she wondered what their perfume would have smelled like.

Perhaps this time it was that it looked like it should be a home that drove her away. It wasn’t.

 

Speedway

After her request for active duty, Giles told Buffy about a group of vampires in Indianapolis. He’d thought it would be a weekend trip, but she uprooted herself again, leaving the Nebraska house vacant, its windows empty eye-sockets.

She defeated the vampires, then found herself living in a motel. She could have afforded better on her Council salary, but she preferred living somewhere with a luggage rack. The manager assumed she’d come in for the race, to watch the cars moving in fast circles but not really going anywhere.

Before she moved on, she’d memorized every crack in the ceiling.

 

This Desert Life

She needed to feel the scorching brightness of sand scalding her eyes. She told the Council she’d heard rumors of shape-shifters in the Nevada wilderness, but she knew they were probably false. She was certain Giles knew, too.

She lived in run-down trailer park, the lawns littered with beer cans. Her view was endless sand, an occasional cactus piercing skyward like a tortured vision of the trees she had once sat beneath.

At night, she heard wolfsong, the shared notes screaming in her ears.

The beer cans on her lawn became so numerous the scraggly grass could barely be seen.

 

Goodnight L.A.

One morning her mirror reflected lines etched into her bloated face, looking like death. Something finally cracked inside her.

Buffy got in her car and drove, trying not to think of her destination.

She had to stop at a gas station to ask for directions, but she eventually pulled into an alley, the Hyperion long since torn down and turned into a parking garage, but this spot remaining strangely untouched.

She stared through the windshield at the occasional weeds pushing through cracks in the pavement.

And she wept at what could have been if she’d had the courage to love.

 

New Frontier

She left California. She never saw the trailer again. She drove until the car died, then walked. Buffy had spent too much time alone, but none with herself. The steps she took were a journey of more than miles. She listened to her heartbeat, stared at stars bright as departed souls, cried and laughed as she saw fit.

People thought she was a little crazy.

When she reached Alaska, she called Dawn, inviting her to visit. Then she bought a home overlooking the ocean.

Despite the wind, the snow, and the harshness of the world, the rosebushes she planted survived.

 

August 22, 2004:

Free Choice

This Place'll Kill You

“Welcome to Doublemeat Palace. May I help you?” Buffy half-screamed into the microphone.

“Gimme a big merger with… barge size… stalk of silk quake, and… blue stick and pan glitches.”

“Okay,” she said, concentrating hard, “that’s… a hamburger, large fries, chocolate milk shake, and… um, sorry, could you repeat that part?”

“Idiot! Blue stick and pan glitches!” he hollered.

“Sorry, sir,” she yelled politely. “Two chicken sandwiches. That’ll be $9.42. Please pull up.”

After the man left, Buffy smiled serenely. His burger’s special sauce was now extra special. She’d added Gravnok nail clippings, guaranteed to cause spontaneous bouts of Riverdancing.

 

August 15, 2004:

Lessons

Meeting His Match

Ike “Ironsides” MacSteven was tough. A D-Day vet, he had become a driving instructor.

Perhaps it was because he drove better than any other instructor. Perhaps it was because he never lost his command of a student. Perhaps it was because everyone was too terrified of Ironsides to retire him. Whatever the reason, he was still teaching the day Buffy Summers showed up for lessons.

One hour later, the car lurched to a stop in a parking lot. The blonde smiled weakly.

“How’d I do?”

Ike opened the door, walked two firm steps to a ditch, and threw up.

“Oh.”

 

August 8, 2004:

Patterns

Changing Tastes

Buffy’s Halloween costumes were made by her mother. The used patterns litter the compartment beneath Joyce’s sewing machine. It’s easy to trace the progress of the little girl. Wonder Woman, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and a cheerleader, all are stacked neatly. Finally, she had chosen a dress from the Halloween store that had made her look like the princess she dreamed of being when she was small.

Joyce put them away and sighed, staring at the door and hoping in vain her college student would burst through it. It seemed she’d chosen a new costume lately: the invisible girl.

 

Simple Tastes

Angelus never needed sight to know Darla was near. The soft rustling of satin announced her presense. On the hunt, she could be as quiet as death, but he could hear the whisper of sleeve against skirt.

She would spend hours at the dressmaker’s, pouring over patterns from Paris. After the final fittings were complete, she would decide whether to kill the seamstress. When Darla had finally found one who suited her tastes perfectly, she had turned her, and the new vampire was producing dozens of beautiful gowns.

Angelus couldn’t be more bored. He preferred Darla lacking in clothing altogether.

 

No Accounting for Taste

Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan was about to go out of his mind. His mother assumed that had happened years ago, but that was beside the point. He’d grown so tired of the clothing everyone wore, with its bland colors and clunky shapes, that he’d done something drastic.

He’d created a pattern for something he thought would be more interesting, and he’d dyed the wool vivid pink with berrybush flowers. At last, it was ready.

“Son, is it not enough you shame me? Must you blind me too?”

Okay, that was one reaction. Somebody out there had to have taste.

 

Herringbone

It’s sedate, traditional, predictable. Herringbone tweed now forms the main staple of Giles’s wardrobe, and sometimes he can almost hear his younger self screaming at him for his pedestrian, conformist style. What happened to leather and an earring?

But he can answer that question as readily as his alter ego can form it. Back then, he’d had to create drama in his life. Now, it’s become such a part of him that he doesn’t need to play dress-up, and what’s more, he really doesn’t want to. Knowing what comes next, even from his closet, is a luxury, not a drudgery.

 

Floral

Tara’s magic has never held the explosive, almost frightening power she’s seen in Willow’s incantations. Instead, her spells tend to grow up from the earth naturally, sometimes feeling like the opening of flowers in May. It’s unheard and soft, something that isn’t noticed as it’s happening, only after the fact. It’s simplicity itself.

She dresses in the hues of her thoughts, soft earth tones and pastels that radiate the gentle warmth of a spring day, and she unapologetically loves wearing florals, not caring what’s fashionable this season. Arrayed like a quiet Flora, her wallflower life is at last in bloom.

 

Checkered

Lorne’s place in the world is precarious. Caritas is a bastion of peace, but peace isn’t always the right response. The demons and humans who bare their souls are not necessarily benevolent. He sees blood-soaked crimes in their melodies. What’s worse, he can see intents, and he knows murders have been committed soon after some of them leaving his door.

Lorne doesn’t judge. That’s why he wears colors on opposite ends of the spectrum together: red with green, orange with blue, yellow with purple. He glances at his garishly checkered shirts and hopes, in the end, it all balances out.

 

Jacquard

Angelus loves all the senses to distraction. That hasn’t changed since he was human. Liam had drunk, eaten, seduced and stolen to feed his senses with as much stimulation as possible. Nothing had mattered except feeling good.

It’s nice that some things stay the same.

William, Drusilla’s little brat, scoffs at him for drinking fine brandy and wanting a waistcoat of the best jacquard silk, laughing uproariously at him when the Irishman’s thick fingers caress the material absently, soothing his sense of touch. William called Angelus soft.

Angelus particularly enjoyed the sounds and sensations of his knuckles cracking William’s ribs.

 

Marbled

Cordelia always knew her family was rich. Her earliest memory is of toddling into her mother’s black and white marble bathroom and tracing the stone’s patterns with a chubby baby finger.

Cancel that. Cordy, even as a baby, never had chubby anything.

Fast forward fifteen or so years, and things change. She lives in an apartment that could have fit inside that marble temple. Her bathroom, by some cosmic joke, is covered in tattered, badly printed wallpaper that is supposed to look like black and white marble. Security deposit or not, she grimly delights in ripping it off the walls.

 

Mullioned

Rain spattered the windowpane as wind lashed the dormitories with a sound like distant gunfire. Wesley sat in a nook facing the gray expanse of moor. His breath steamed the old-fashioned, mullioned windows, warm against the bitter cold.

The Watcher’s Academy had been his destiny from childhood, and he always knew he would go there eventually, just as everyone had to die eventually. Now that he was there, he felt he had died as all other paths for his future were ripped away, the only proof he still lived the clouds on the glass, crisscrossed by a net of lead.

 

Swirled

Dawn loved ice cream. A soft serve stand was a couple streets away from their house in L.A., and she used to bother her sister to take her there for a cone every day in the summertime. Usually, after the mandatory squabbling, Buffy would cave in and walk her there. Dawn would always order the same thing: chocolate and vanilla swirl. That way she could have it all.

After she found out she was the Key, Dawn remembered the swirly cones, realizing how much they had in common. She wasn’t really one thing or the other, but both at once.

 

Pinstripes

Spike loved Chicago in the 1930’s. The music was pure sin, the gin joints served up just the right mixture of booze and violence, women he’d never spoken to flashed their knees at him just walking down the street, the Depression laced people’s blood with tantalizing desperation, and he knew his pinstripe suit made him look as handsome as the devil himself.

Still, there was something in the tiny, miniscule lines of white radiating through the black of his suits that made him feel strange. Dru would look at him and sigh, “What’s outside is inside,” in the oddest tone.

 

Paisley

In seventh grade, Xander’s mother had forced him to wear to school the brown and green paisley shirt his grandmother had sent him. He had dreaded walking in the door, knowing he looked like a fool. The kids already gave him a hard time about his drunken father and not having enough money in the lunchline for anything but salad.

He’d been right. They’d hurled so many cruel jokes at him about his shirt they didn’t have time to pick on him for anything else.

From then on, Xander’s wardrobe was filled with the most tasteless things he could find.

 

Striped

Prison life isn’t what Faith expected from cartoons. In old Warner Brothers shorts, cons wore black and white stripes and played harmonicas to cover up the sounds of someone digging through a wall with a toothpick.

They didn’t mention hours of haunted silence. She could have broken out, no toothpick and harmonica orchestra necessary, but chose not to. There aren’t any striped uniforms, but her soul is striped black and white. Every day she forces herself to pay for what she’s done, she hopes those white stripes get a little wider, the black a little thinner, but they’ll never disappear.

 

Plaid

There’s a point when something is so overdone it becomes subtle. Darla was going for exactly that with the schoolgirl look. Sweet gray and blue plaid paired with a pristine white blouse, demure kneesocks and saddle shoes radiated so much purity it was obscene. Every high school boy she passed smelled so strongly of hormones she had to fight to keep from laughing.

Men had changed so little over the centuries it was almost endearing. Show them what they want, and they’d drool. Keep it covered, and they’d drool so much they’d almost die of dehydration before she could bite.

 

August 1, 2004:

Invitations

Until Death Do Us Part

__

You are cordially invited to the wedding of  
Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody,  
and Drusilla  
Both of the line of Aurelius  
The twenty-ninth day of August, 1965  
At Club Dark, Pasadena, California  
Reception to follow  
Regrets answered with immediate death  
Presents required  
BYOB

“How’s that, m’lady?” Spike asked as he held up one of the invitations. The printer had thought he was crazy, but then he had tragically died in a “freak barbeque fork accident” after the order was filled.

“Pretty,” Drusilla said. “Now the angels won’t weep over us living in sin anymore.”

“Nope. They’ll scream instead,” Spike chuckled

 

Reunion

Years had passed since Giles had last seen Buffy. There were calls and letters, but visits between Rome and Bath had become less and less frequent, stopping altogether until one fine April evening.

The knock at the door was light but firm, and Giles shrugged on a bathrobe and peered through the peephole to see Buffy’s smile. He fumbled with the locks, suddenly eager to see his protégé, feeling a loneliness he hadn’t realized he’d possessed.

“What a lovely surprise!” he said, grinning. “Do come in!”

“Thanks, Giles,” she said, her smile changing as her face transformed. “I needed that.”

 

Happy Ending

Almost a year had passed since the battle outside the Hyperion had ended in victory. The daily job of living had returned, helping the hopeless, trying to make sense of the world.

Angel held his breath when he saw the envelope in his morning mail. The handwriting, though he’d rarely seen it, was almost as familiar to him as his own. Carefully, he opened it, finding a brief note.

__

Angel,

Father’s Day is Sunday, and I wondered if maybe you’d like to grab dinner or something.

Connor

For one moment, the world actually seemed to be spinning the right way.

 

July 23, 2004:

Ring

Absense of Center

The full moon looked unusually close. It bathed the cemetery in cool, silver light, making the air seem chilled, closer to the bone. Buffy sat on a tombstone, listening intently for something to be wrong.

Quiet pressed the cold into her heart.

Why had they brought her back? They avoided her. No demons were threatening the world. She wasn’t needed.

Looking heavenward, she saw a halo around the moon, bright as a coin. Suddenly, she remembered high school science: a ring around the moon means rain.

She walked home, trying not to think that for her it was always raining.

 

Failing the Test

Spike tried to pretend Drusilla wasn’t crazy. He’d call her eccentric, psychic, quixotic, even artistic, and many other words ending in -ic, except, of course, lunatic. She was his sire, and nothing was wrong with her. Granted, he’d never really believed it, but he’d done his best to try.

But couldn’t deny this proof of her insanity. Biting his lip, he tried the question once more, hoping for a different response. After all, it was multiple choice, and any of three answers was acceptable.

“Pet, which Beatle do you find most attractive again?”

“Ringo!”

Nuttier than a jar of Jiff.

 

Sticks and Stones

“Let me get this straight, Giles,” Xander said in disbelief. “’Ring Around the Rosie’ was written by the Council to train Slayers?”

“Yes,” Giles responded, looking up from his book. “The ‘ring around the rosy’ is the bite mark found on the victim’s neck, ‘a pocket full of posies’ refers to a good Slayer always carrying an arsenal of stakes, ‘ashes ashes’ is rather obvious, and…”

He drifted off uncomfortably.

“’We all fall down,’” Buffy said, glancing at her Watcher, “means Slayers die. Right?”

He nodded. “That was the idea.”

Buffy looked at him, determined. “I always hated that game.”

 

July 16, 2004:

Eyes

Looking the Part

Giles hated his glasses. He was eighteen when his eyesight had slipped

. Out of vanity, he’d rarely worn them through college, his days with his fellow black magic junkies often blurred, and he liked things that way.

Later, when he’d received his first assignment and been sent to Sunnydale, the glasses had seemed as much a necessity for the job as his books or his ever-present tweed. They no longer felt like a burden, but rather the last line of defense, the only shield he sometimes had between a world that seemed ultimately unfair and his own roiling inner thoughts.

 

New Eyes

William’s glasses weren’t with him when he awoke in the confines of his coffin six feet below ground. The surge of panic that had gone through him at first didn’t truly leave, but it took him a long time to break free, and his mind poured over small details.

Even as he pushed his way through the soil, a feat that obscenely mimicked birth in some way, he missed the comforting weight on the bridge of his nose. When he reached the surface and saw with perfect clarity the mysterious woman standing before him, he knew things had changed forever.

 

Fashionably Blurred

Cordelia was twelve when she heard the doctor say those fateful words: “You need glasses.” She remembered crying, throwing a tantrum, shrieking until she was hoarse, but it was no use. She’d gotten a pair of designer frames that she knew made her look as mousy as that nerd Willow.

The glasses disappeared into her purse every day on her way into school. She faked her way through the hallways, blaming collisions on whomever she’d hit, saying taking notes from the board was for losers. When she got contacts at sixteen, she gleefully ran those glasses over with Daddy’s Porsche.

 

Change of View

Wesley stopped wearing his glasses when things fell apart. He didn’t know exactly why he’d chosen to suddenly begin wearing contacts. His eyes had rebelled at first, turning bloodshot and stinging as though he’d rubbed sand in them. He only knew that it was necessary. The Wesley who had worn glasses had been beaten to a bloody pulp in the schoolyard countless times, been kidnapped by demons and quailed before them, been a ridiculous fool and a useless little boy. Without them, his naked stare seemed to hold more weight than before. And he needed every weapon he could get.

 

Frames

Fred’s eyeglasses were her signature in high school. She’d owned half a dozen pairs, and each one was quirky. There were her black cat’s eye glasses, straight out of Lisa Loeb’s video, and a pair with pink flamingos for arms and palm trees around the eyepieces. There was one that was plaid, another in psychedelic paisley, and even a pair studded with fake rubies, her birthstone. The last pair were plain gray metal frames, understated but classic. Those were the ones that she had kept with her through Pylea, and it was those Wesley kept on his desk in memorial.

 

Brief Respite

It’s a quiet summer evening in Sunnydale. No vampires are rising, no ghosts rampage, no nameless evils roam the streets tonight. Just this once, the world is at rest, and the Slayer is too.

It’s not an extraordinary moment. Buffy, Xander, and Willow are curled on the couch in the Summers’ living room, sharing a bowl of popcorn and watching a Charlie Chaplin film festival on late night TV, laughing, just being teenagers. Buffy knows how rare the simple times are, and the knowledge casts a brief shadow over her heart. This lull is only the eye of the storm.

 

Building Calluses

Her face is set into an unmoving mask, dead-looking and inhuman. If she is to succeed, there can be no moment of weakness. Not again. Since Jenny’s death, Buffy has spent almost every sunlit hour drilling her skills, loading and reloading her crossbow, pulling the trigger with absolute precision.

After the sun sets and the Slayer has left, Willow cautiously comes out from the stacks and sees the dartboard Buffy has used. A ruined, scarred picture of Angel hangs from the target, one dart left dead center.

“Bull’s-eye,” she whispers softly, and sheds the tears the Slayer can’t afford to.

 

Evening Customer

The butcher has known Spike since he started showing up a couple years ago, always with the same order: blood. The butcher is no idiot. He doesn’t ask questions.

“Evening,” he calls when the bell rings the arrival of a late-night customer. “Geez… what happened?”

Spike slouches forward painfully, his face a mass of purple.

“Nothing,” Spike says through shattered lips.

The butcher stares, then bags twice the usual amount and a steak.

“Put the rib-eye on your face; it’ll help.”

“Don’t have enough…”

“On the house.”

Spike looks away, ashamed at the charity, but takes the package and leaves.

 

Spirited Away

Angel remembers his mother being terrified of her children falling under the gaze of the evil eye. It was a common belief in Ireland. No child was ever to be treasured too openly or the fairies would be tempted to steal the baby and replace it with a changling. Of course, he’d thought it all nonsense.

Angel opens the photo album again and sees his infant son smiling up at him. He had adored Connor, his beautiful, impossible, precious little boy, lavishing him with all the love in his heart.

He should have known it could end no other way.

 

Rich Man’s Burden

Wolfram and Hart is a luxurious trap, and Angel knows it. It’s too easy. Money flows like wine, and every material wish they have is granted, in many cases before they can even think of it. He’s seen the changes happening. Lorne is obsessed with Hollywood. Gunn has become so power-hungry he’s let them inside his brain. Wesley has retreated inside himself, never letting anyone within arm’s reach. Fred remains relatively untouched, but Angel wonders for how long.

He remembers the saying about it being easier to pass through the eye of a needle. He knows he’s going to hell.

 

Brown

Angel used to go to the hospital and watch over Cordelia in the small hours of the morning. He never told the others where he went, but he suspected they knew. For long hours, he stood perfectly still at her bedside, a statue draped in black, looking at her equally still form.

He used to will her eyes to open, concentrating all his mind on the closed eyelids that hid her warm brown eyes from him. But he left each morning, defeated. It was months later when he stopped coming altogether, convinced they would never open again.

He was right.

 

Green

Buffy’s eyes were green. Not the color of the grass or seafoam, they were a blend of blue viewed through a thin layer of yellow. Sometimes she wonders if that’s the Slayer in her. If she were ever simply human, would her eyes become the sky-blue her mother told her they were at birth? Does being the Slayer veil her life, making her see things others couldn’t or wouldn’t in different shades?

As a teenager, she had looked in the mirror and wished that her eyes were pure blue. Later, she wished her eyes would turn yellow as a cat’s.

 

Black

The kick is immediate. Willow doesn’t know when doing magic started to feel so utterly right, more real than anything else she did. Slowly, the times when she wasn’t using magic seemed more and more gray, while each time she uttered a spell, the world burst into firework colors, the more powerful the spell, the stronger the shades.

But the colors are an illusion, a lie that doesn’t truly deceive her. The blackness of her eyes mirrors the reality in her soul, and the ever-present gnawing for more is the craving of the ravening beast she has born within herself.

 

Blue

Xander never liked Spike’s eyes. They were a blue that drew in everything around him. Xander had wondered if it was some kind of thrall, and he was never really sure it wasn’t. After all, Spike had survived the Initiative, had slept with Buffy, had seduced Anya, had even managed to come back from the dead. What Spike wanted, it seemed he got.

But dreams of those blue eyes, piercing and sweet, hovering above him even on the other side of the world, terrify him. No matter what the vampire does, Xander won’t submit. He won’t admit he wants him.

 

Gold

A vampire will never see first-hand what he or she looks like in demon face. No mirror will ever hold that sight, and even videotapes tend to blur the features, making them flat as a doll’s.

Angelus had drawn them all, except himself, of course, and the portraits were all each of them had ever known of their other faces. Drusilla’s in particular fascinated him. The lines of her demon’s face were different from the others, her eyes glowing a demonic gold he hoped she’d inherited from him. They obliterated any sense of humanity. To him, they were utterly beautiful.

 

Red

Lorne doesn’t dress in the morning without putting on a rainbow, and he prefers his settings to be dashed in crayon-box colors. His eyes, perfectly ruby red, sparkle at the thought of glitter and glamour.

Of all of them, he looks least human, even after Illyria’s arrival. But if anyone wants an ear to bend, it’s Lorne they come to. Whether it’s a tale of heartbreak at the hands of a Slayer or of a girl whose death has left them all stunned, it’s the red eyes that will soften, and listen, and shed the most human tears of sympathy.

 

July 9, 2004:

Traveling/Vacations

But the Brochure Said...

“We need time away from all this stress,” Drusilla had said languidly as she watched Spike pace back and forth, his brow knitted together.

“But…” he said.

“It’s true,” Drusilla assured him. “The minions are underfoot, the dollies refuse to dance, and the metal horses in the street tap-tap-tap in my brain.”

“I understand, but…”

“The delicious travel agent was very informative and got us lovely tickets. We’ll have a splendid time.”

“Pet, I’d have splendid time with you anywhere, but…”

“But what?”

Spike sat down beside her, trying to order his words gently. “The Sahara has a few problems…”

 

Non-Open on Sunday Drabble: Gay Marriage Drabble

Matched Pair

Spike hadn’t thrown up in 150 years. However, his iron-clad stomach was threatening to spew all over the judge. Angel looked at him, concern written on his features, and his expression was enough to act like miraculous Mylanta, calming Spike’s nerves instantly.

“You okay?” Angel asked, lightly pressing his hand.

“I’m fine!” Spike snapped. “Your hair’s sticking straight up again. It’ll ruin the wedding pictures.”

“Not if we match,” Angel grinned, pulling his fiance into a kiss, rumpling the blond’s hair. “Let’s get the I do’s done so we can get to the wedding night.”

“Best plan you’ve ever had.”

 

July 2, 2004

The 80's

Rubik’s Cube

“Read, set, go!” Xander yelled, his fingers working feverishly.

Willow turned the plastic cube like mad, clicking the squares into place, lining up the green side, the red, the white. Blue gave her trouble, as it always seemed to do, but she slid the pieces home, completing it and the orange side simultaneously, holding the toy high above her head and calling “Time!”

Xander stared from her to the half-finished cube in his hands.

“I told you I’d do it the right way faster than you could peel off all the stickers,” Willow grinned. “You owe me a Chocolate Hurricane.”

 

Ms. Pac-Man

“Pet?” Spike whispered, careful not to startle her. The last time he’d done that when she was in an arcade, he’d gotten a cracked rib. “The sun will be up soon. We should get going.”

“But I haven’t won yet!” she whined, jerking the joystick madly. “The ghosties are floating about, and the energy pellets blink like fireflies!”

“Yes,” Spike agreed, “they do, but you can come back tonight and try again.”

As her little yellow munching circle died, she smashed her fist through the screen.

“Or not,” Spike said, quickly ushering her through the backdoor of the pizza parlor.

 

Simon

Giles stared at the mysterious object before him that glowed with red, green, blue, and yellow light. It lay dormant, silent and forbidding. Then, abruptly, it lit, the colors flickering in random patterns like a bad drug trip, and he strained to memorize the sequence.

“Give up, Ripper,” Ethan drawled from the couch, reeking of vodka. “Admit defeat.”

Giles scowled at the other man, his hands going through a wild, well co-ordinated ballet. When he was done, the toy went silent momentarily, then played a victory tune.

“I believe you owe me a forty-year-old bottle of scotch,” Giles said, grinning.

 

Trivial Pursuit

“Three,” Joyce said, moving her marker, “Arts and Entertainment or Sports. I choose Arts.”

“But you’re terrible at art,” Hank said as his sister took a card from the box.

“No, I’m not,” Joyce said, hurt.

Hank shrugged as Gladys read, “Name the artist known for his Blue Period.”

Joyce grinned: Picasso. Then she heard her mother’s voice in her head, saying “Boys don’t like girls who are smart.” She glanced at Hank, then the floor.

“Dali,” she said, not looking up.

“Wrong!” Gladys crowed, and Hank shook his head, smiling fondly. She smiled back, trying to swallow her self-loathing.

 

Cabbage Patch Doll

Fred straightened the pink and white gingham dress on Audrey Rose, whose honey-blonde yarn hair was braided into two pigtails that mirrored her mommy’s. Carefully, Fred set her on the picnic blanket. Cups of lemonade had been passed out already, and a stack of chocolate chip cookies sat on a plate nearby. The shady patch under the big oak tree had a nice view of the meadow, and Fred nodded happily, certain her daughter was having a good time.

“Alright now, settle down,” she said, balancing her glasses on the end of her nose, “and I’ll read to you. Ahem. ‘Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd- looking little girl sat in a cab with her father…’”

 

Shopping at Recordtown

The record store clerk gave the familiar couple a glance over his Rolling Stone. Spike gravitated to the punk bins while Dru gathered albums randomly.

“Isn’t this name pretty?” she said, gliding beside him.

“Tears for Fears? Yeah, but that’s all they’re good for.”

“Oh,” said Dru, face falling. “What about this one?”

“U2? Anyone who does a song titled “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” sounds promising.”

“Ah-ha!” Dru yelled, startling him.

“What?”

“Ah-Ha! The lead singer is pretty,” she said, showing him the album.

Spike grimaced but kept mum. He’d find a way to “accidentally” break it on the way home.

 

Dig, If You Will

Spike didn’t know what about Prince did it for Drusilla. The Purple Rain soundtrack hadn’t been off their bedroom turntable for a week, and he’d barely been upright for a week. Well, most of him hadn’t been upright. Dru had become… extremely creative. The use she’d found for the shower curtain rod yesterday had actually made his jaw drop.

“Do you hear the doves cry?” she cooed into his shoulder. “They’re checkered and peach and black.”

“I don’t care if they’re doing the cha-cha, just keep doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing! I think I love this man.”

 

I Want My…

“Spike?” Drusilla asked, staring at MTV. “Is that a demon?”

“No, princess,” he said, glancing at the video. “That’s Michael Jackson. Looks right stupid in those yellow contacts.”

“Is he the one who wants some poor girl’s sex? That’s a very rude song,” Drusilla sniffed primly.

“No, that’s George Michael, not Michael Jackson.”

“I thought that one had braids and eyeliner?”

“No, that’s Boy George.”

“That was a boy? This decade is confusing,” Drusilla said, turning off MTV. “I want your sex.”

“Thought you said that was rude,” Spike grinned.

“But you’re a rude, bad man. That makes it okay.”

 

Tragedy

Spike’s heart was in his throat as he burst through their apartment door. Drusilla was on the floor, rocking back and forth, wailing inconsolably. Almost everything in the room was smashed to pieces.

“Pet, what’s wrong?” he said, throwing himself next to her, ignoring the jabs of glass in his legs. “Are you hurt?

“The police,” Drusilla sobbed helplessly on his shoulder.

“The police were here,” he asked, confused.

“The Police broke up,” Dru cried. “The radio said so!” She pointed an accusatory finger at the disemboweled radio.

“The group?” Spike said, patting her back. “Damn. I might cry myself.”

 

Everything She Do Just Turn Me On

“Spike?” Dru asked lazily as she painted his nails. “Is every little thing I do magic?”

He chuckled, blowing lightly on the hand she’d finished. “To me? Yeah.”

“So, is what I’m doing right now magical?” she asked earnestly, looking at the bottle of polish.

He caught her lightly under the chin and gave her a sweet kiss, smudging black polish on her skin.

“Dru, you could run the garbage disposal and it’d be magical,” he said, and she suddenly began to laugh. “What?”

“I guess I am magic,” she said with a naughty smile. “That kiss made you levitate!”

 

She’s Got the Look

Cordy looked critically in the mirror before she left for second grade Picture Day. Her permed hair was gathered into a side ponytail with a teal scrunchie. Her matching teal shirt with a peach and black geometric pattern had the newest, plumpest shoulderpads. Her black lace skirt looked like something from Madonna’s closet, and she wore three pairs of bright socks, each rolled down to reveal the ones underneath. Her color-coordinated Swatch completed the effect. Nodding certainly, she headed out the door.

Years later, when Willow and Xander showed Buffy the photograph, they’d laughed so hard they’d nearly passed out.

 

June 25, 2004

Dialogue Only

Three’s a Crowd

“I like the big pinwheel.”

“Do you?”

“Mmm. It waves its arms in the air and makes me want to dance. Will you dance with me, sweet boy?”

“Love to.”

“Will you stop it! People are staring!”

“Maybe they’re staring at your neckline, Darla. I think I can see your navel.”

“I will not be seen with two crazy demons who waltz in front of windmills on miniature golf courses! I’ve had it!”

“Actually, I’d say she hasn’t had enough of it of late.”

“Misses Daddy. Can we do naughty things inside the little castle?”

“Sounds good to me, Princess.”

 

Of Two Minds

“She’s pretty.”

“On that much we agree. She’s pretty.”

“Bite her.”

“No.”

“Aw, come on! One little sip.”

“You’re not going to be satisfied with a sip and you know it.”

“Probably not. Which means you wouldn’t be either. So go on. Do it. Maybe turn her. She’d make a hot vampire.”

“No.”

“If you’re going to act this way, don’t take us to the Bronze!”

“It’s not my choice. Buffy wanted to meet here and…”

“Here she comes. Tender. Sweet. You know she’d be delicious.”

“Will you shut up!”

“Uh, hey Angel. Who’re you talkin’ too?”

“Just myself, Willow.”

 

Grief Counseling

“Ready for Disney magic, Dawnster?”

“You don’t have to stay. I can be home alone.”

“We know, but since your sister splatted all over the pavement, everyone feels guilty unless they’re with you. But when we’re here, we still feel guilty. Xander, why do we come here again?”

“Remember that talk we had about you not saying certain things?”

“Yes. I think that’s stupid. Dawn, you like Pinocchio, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Good. We rented it. You stay here and watch it, and Xander and I will leave to have sex. See? Everyone will be much happier!”

“Anya?”

“Yes?”

“Go make popcorn.”

 

Between Asleep and Awake

“Buffy?”

“Shut up. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Ehm, Buffy…”

“Quiet down or I’ll stake you.”

“But, Buffy…”

“For crying out loud, Spike! I don’t care how hot and double-jointed you are! I’m trying to sleep, and if you don’t stop, it’ll be weeks before you’re in a position to wake me up again! Now shut up!”

“Buffy!”

“Oh my gosh. Uh, sorry?”

“Don’t suppose you have a reason why you were murmuring that albino vampire’s name in your sleep? I thought it might have been a nightmare, which was why I was trying to wake you.”

“Oops. Nothing personal, Riley.”

 

June 18, 2004

Ice Cream

Faded Flavors

He felt as out of place as a vampire in an ice cream parlour, probably because that’s what he was. The cheerful colors on the walls and the smiling children made him want to crawl inside himself.

“Help ya?” asked the grandfatherly man behind the counter.

Angel pointed at the flavor in question.

“One scoop or two?”

“One is enough,” he said in a dead voice.

Staring at the dark brown ice cream heaped on top of the cone, he tentatively licked it, trying to recapture the taste from that one day he had given back, but he never could.

 

Avid Appetite

Spike had never been a delicate eater, even when mortal. His mother had berated him for putting his sleeve in the butter dish or getting soup stains on his cuffs. As a vampire, Darla had wailed at his haphazard biting technique that ruined not only his own, but her entire outfit on occasion.

However, bloodlust was nothing compared to chocolate ripple hunger. As Spike stuck him tongue into the bottom of the cone like a five-year-old, intent on licking out the last remnants of ice cream, Dawn laughed hysterically.

“What?” he asked, highly offended, smeared ice cream on his chin.

 

How We Lost the War

Willow was in a seriously bad mood. The witch tried not to make noise as she walked through Buffy’s house, the floors completely carpeted in young girls.

The kitchen, however, remained unoccupied. Sighing blissfully, she opened the door to the freezer, extracting her saving grace.

The carton of chocolate ice cream was suspiciously light. She opened the lid and gazed horrorstruck at the empty tub someone had replaced in the freezer.

Willow’s eyes turned dark as her Haagen Das should have been. The following explosion was more effective at reducing the number of potentials than any foray by the First.

 

June 11, 2004

Poetry

Poetry in Motion

She’s beautiful. There’s no other word for it as Spike watches the Slayer from across the cemetary on a cool night in December. The freak snow of yesterday has almost disappeared, but he can see the vapor of her breath as she fights three newly risen fledges.

It’s poetry, the reach of her arm, the impossible curve of her back as she flips to face another opponent, the play of moonlight on the leather encasing her legs.

Yep, Spike thinks, crushing out a cigarette on the sole of his shoe, Sunnydale is a hellhole, but this Faith is worth it.

 

Evocative Language

When Buffy took Poetry 250: Forms and Themes, it had been something of a joke. It had either been this or Great Novels in History, and she’d assumed poems were shorter. She hadn’t yet tangled with Paradise Lost.

However, haiku were pretty, and brief, and capable of being read on patrol without getting interupted. Shakespeare wasn’t as unfathomable as she’d been led to believe. She even found she liked Whitman in spite of his beard giving her a wiggins.

She had not, however, expected to weep like a child in class when the professor had covered Sonnets from the Portugese.

 

Covers and Contents

Xander Harris was a moron, as Cordelia had proclaimed to anyone within hearing distance since they were ten. It was amazing he could tie the chocolate-syrup-stained laces on his dorky running shoes. He made the stupidest comments possible for a human being in any situation, from romantic to apocolyptic. He was an idiot.

But Giles knew differently.

The boy’s references were sometimes a touch too classical, his wit slightly too sharp. When Xander fell asleep over the library table, clutching a tattered comic book, Giles looked inside it and found, to his complete lack of surprise, a copy of Tennyson.

 

Little Jumping Joan

Dawn is going to college soon, returning to the States. Though Dawn took to Italian well, it would be too difficult for her to take a university-level class in Rome. Buffy always knew it was only a matter of time before Dawn returned to America.

But Buffy won’t. There is too much work with the new Slayers. What had started as a temporary outpost quickly became permanent. Dawn will be half a globe away, and her friends are scattered to the four corners of the world. Or dead.

With only herself for company, she wonders how quickly she’ll go mad.

__

Here am I,  
Little Jumping Joan.  
When nobody’s with me,  
I’m all alone.

 

Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home

Angelus looked around the home he had turned into a nightmare. The parents had been easy, no challenge at all. Her elder sister seemed to have some sense and had run at him with a flaming log from the fire. Of course, he’d used it on her instead. The younger one had tried crawling out the window, and he’d allowed her to fall to her death.

But Ann, a child of three years, had escaped his notice until now as the child toddled into the room.

“Well, well,” he said, a grin creeping across his face, “don’t you like… sweet.”

__

Ladybird, ladybird,  
fly away home.  
Your house is on fire,  
Your children will burn.  
All except one,  
And that’s little Ann  
And she has crept under the warming pan.

 

There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

“You’re outta Doritos!” Xander called.

Again, Giles’s home had been invaded by teenagers. Well, Anya and Spike could hardly be considered teenagers, but that was beside the point.

“Giles!” screamed Buffy. “If Spike keeps staring at me, I’m gonna rip his eyes out, ‘kay?”

“Try it, Miffy!” Spike yelled back.

Suddenly, the house was plunged into darkness.

“Oops,” Willow said quietly. “I think my computer blew a fuse... for the block.”

“Great! Xander and I can have sex here without anyone seeing!”

“ANYA!”

“Actually, I would.”

“SPIKE!”

Just now, whipping them soundly and sending them to bed sounded bloody wonderful.

__

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe  
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.  
She gave them all broth without and bread,  
Whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

 

The Great Spike and Angel War of 2004

The Gauntlet Thrown

“Like my poetry, do you mate?” Spike mumbled to himself, grinning as he slipped a paper into each meeting handout for the day, sandwiching it between “Expenditures in Mystical Stenography” and “Report on Standards in Demonic Executions.”

Angel began automatically to read aloud from the page in front of the full board, stopping as soon as he recognized the meter, but he saw everyone’s lips moving silently to finish the verse.

__

There once was a young lad from Galway  
Who into a vampire’s trap did stray.  
Though she knew he was dumb,  
He had a nice bum  
So she decided to turn him anyway.

 

The Return Volley

The steno pool was laughing, Spike noted, and since he hadn’t humiliated Angel in the last ten minutes, he had a suspicion something was wrong.

Spray-painted in letters two feet tall on the breakroom wall was Angel’s response to Spike’s meeting debacle.

__

There once was a poet from London  
Whose verses were so bad they would stun.  
The people laughed and he cried,  
Wandered into a stable and died,  
Now the whole female race does him shun.

“I’ll get him back,” Spike vowed, secretly beginning to enjoy the battle of wits, though he suspected his opponent was an unarmed man.

 

Hitting Below the Belt

It was noon in the cafeteria of Wolfram & Hart when the intercom crackled to life with a loud “Testing, testing, Angel is a pouf, one, two.”

Angel groaned and put his mug of blood on the table, preparing for the inevitable.

“Ahem. This is for our beloved CEO.

__

“There once was a vamp who was so thick  
His brain could be likened unto a brick.  
His soul plays hide and seek  
About three times a week,  
And that’s what’s gone and made him a eunuch!”

Laughter erupted around him until the others saw Angel had turned purple in rage.

 

War’s Aria

By three o’clock Spike began to worry. Angel had done nothing as yet, and he was getting paranoid, jumping at small noises.

That’s when the opera singer arrived, setting up camp in the Wolfram & Hart atrium. Spike stared in disbelief as the man’s powerful voice sang in a sing-song tune that practically shook the windows out of their casements.

__

"Spike is a vamp with hygiene so bad  
For eight years in the same clothes he’s been clad.  
His breath reeks so strongly  
You would not think wrongly  
It had driven many a victim mad."

A low growl filled the air.

 

Calling in the Reserves

Angel was listening to his usual classical music radio station during dinner that evening, when suddenly he heard the announcer, in obviously terrified tones, introduce a guest DJ for the program.

“Right then. I’ll be bringing you an evening of punk, acid, and possibly recordings of dental drills, but before that, I have but one thing to say:

__

The head of Wolfram & Hart in L.A.,  
Is hot, lonely, eager, and very gay.  
His number is five-five-five  
Six-two-nine-three, no jive,  
If you want a date, then call him right away!"

“I’m going to kill him,” Angel said calmly. “Slowly.”

 

The Agony of Defeat

All night, obscene phone calls kept him awake, but Angel smiled at the new billboard outside his window.

__

A vampire named Spike who was very drunk  
Met up in the woods with an angry skunk.  
It sprayed him but good  
As dumbstruck he stood,  
And he burned up his clothes because they stunk.

A huge photograph circa 1974 showed Spike passed out in a forest glen. Or rather, it showed Spike’s naked backside and a pile of burning clothes.

The scream was audible for blocks.

“Fine! You win!”

Angel grinned. Never get into a game of limericks with an Irishman.

 

June 4, 2004:

David Bowie Song Titles

Eight Line Poem

She remembers how much she liked haiku, and for some strange reason, she feels drawn to poetry after his death. Still, it startles her when one day in Italy she puts pen to paper and instead of a grocery list, the poem comes out.

__

Blue eyes that looked  
One last time on the world  
Before the fire  
Burned them away.  
Faith and I booked  
As the hellmouth swirled:  
A bus’s squealing tire,  
And some new slayer said “Oi vay!”

?

Buffy stares at the poem for a minute before saying, “Okay, so maybe there is one poet worse than he was.”

 

I’m Afraid of Americans

The brown sludge they drink in the morning doesn’t resemble a beverage so much as axel grease. The telly is filled with drivel series about twenty-somethings who have the intelligence of laundry soap. The food is… well, truthfully, not all that much better than at home, but the language has been so badly mangled that he barely recognizes it as his own, and yet no one even realizes how far things have sunk. They simply accept the onslaught of cultural decay.

But on the day Giles woke up cheerily humming a tune by the Backstreet Boys, he knew real fear.

 

Tiny Girls

Tiny. That’s what Jenny called Buffy when she found out the girl was the Slayer. In truth, Giles had thought the same thing when he’d first seen the blonde California teenager standing in the library. The photograph the Council had given him was accurate, but it hadn’t conveyed how small she seemed for the burden she had to bear.

Now he stands in a house full of girls, all possibly Slayers one day. And he thinks the same thing each time he looks at them: too young, too innocent, too small to have to shoulder the burden. But one will.

 

You Can’t Talk

He lies beside her after she has finished with him, and he longs to whisper what he feels. The soft rise and fall of her chest as she breaths, a novelty for him, hypnotizes him, but even in sleep her features are drawn, tense. He wants to make those harsh lines fade away, but when they’re together, she wants nothing but violence, his screams and hers blending in a carnal music with no beauty in it.

He parts his lips to tell her he loves her, but her eyes flutter open on instinct, and she silences him with a look.

 

Queen Bitch

Xander stared at Cordelia across the library table. She was wearing an outfit he’d never seen before, though, granted, he’d never seen her wear the anything twice. This was a red dress, the neckline square, showing off a diamond pendant: probably a present from some ex. She was tired of reading and had taken to filing her nails, dust blowing across the pages. Giles looked absolutely livid. And she looked…

“Cordy, if you were any more useless, you’d be…” Xander began.

“You?” she finished, giving him an icy look.

He glared back and tried not to think about broom closets.

 

You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving

Buffy watched as his tail lights disappeared down Revello Drive. He’d insisted on driving her home, and though neither had said so, both knew it had more to do with not wanting to leave her standing by her mother’s grave than worrying about her safely.

“Forever,” she’d said, and his eyes had become haunted. Even with an eternity of life, the word frightened him. He’d left her many times, and though she knew some weren’t his fault, she wondered if he would ever realize the image that came to mind, unbidden, every time she saw him, was him leaving again.

 

Bars of the County Jail

Here I sit, alone, except for Whinathon, who shouldn’t count, in a jail full of criminals. Okay, so there’s one guy, and he’s here for being kinda drunk, but still, it’s jail. My life is gripped in a series of bad decisions and stuff. I’m like Lex Luthor now. I’ve gone over to the dark side of the Force. Cool.

Except, you know, I didn’t think it’d turn out this way. It was supposed to be fun, and now things aren’t fun at all. They stopped being fun a long time ago.

I wonder if I can get a harmonica...

 

Underground

It was cold, dark, dank and several other words that Darla wouldn’t say in the Master’s presense. It wasn’t just from a sense of fear, although she wasn’t stupid. He seemed honestly proud of his Court, and he had been kinder to her than anyone else.

She’d accepted she would never see sunlight again. But to live here, with the earth bearing down upon her and the air scented in decay, seemed too much to her. He said she would adapt in time and think of it as a paradise. She found herself hoping her taste never sunk that far.

 

As the World Falls Down

Angel knew he’d never survive this battle. The desperate plan would maybe win the world a brief respite, but his survival seemed unlikely.

The images that went through his mind were single moments that hadn’t seemed significant at the time. He remembered the smell of his mother’s perfume when she’d tucked him in at night, the way Darla’s eyes had glowed when they danced in Paris, the sound of the engines of the boat that took him to America, the taste of ice cream and the feel of his infant son in his arms. He never felt the final blow.

 

Chilly Down

“Ow, Jonathon, let go!” Andrew yelled as the shorter boy got him in a headlock, trying to snatch the freeze ray.

“You let go, you stupid,” he struggled to come up with an insult bad enough, “nerf herder!”

“Yeah, well you’re… Lobelia Baggins!” Andrew shot back.

Warren stared at his cohorts, rapidly going insane.

“If you guys will stop squabbling like the pair of Jawas you are,” Warren said in a forced-calm voice, “you’d realize you don’t know how to work the ray yet.”

“Huh?”

“Oh… yeah.”

“First of all, the lever goes up for heat, and down for freeze,” Warren said, wishing he could freeze them. Permanently.

 

Within You

When she was seven, a boy in Mrs. Forrest’s third grade class told Dawn people sometimes swallowed spiders in their sleep. For weeks, she’d slept with tape over her mouth, but even so, whenever she thought about it she’d get a feeling in her belly like something was in there, alive and not part of her.

It’s been two years since she found out she was the Key, and sometimes she has that feeling again, wondering if there’s something alive inside her that isn’t her at all. And sometimes she wonders if the monks made that memory for a reason.

 

Dance Magic

Sleep was pulling at Tara’s fingertips and toes, but in a good way. This day seemed to have gone on forever: her family and the Scoobies squaring off against each other, secrets revealed, acceptance, and a party that was almost dreamlike in its happiness. But now, this was the best part. Her arms were wrapped around Willow, not clinging tightly but gently, holding her in warmth and peace. She could feel the other witch smile against her shoulder. When their feet left the floor, they both knew, but neither was surprised. After all, their hearts were already dancing on air.

 

Pallas Athena

Wesley’s first schoolboy crush on a celebrity was unusual. Other boys had pictures of Raquel Welsh or Brooke Shields or Olivia Newton John hanging next to their beds or pasted into the front of their driest textbooks to gaze at when the teacher got boring. Wesley, though, had fallen head over heels for an engraving of Athena from a Victorian collection of mythology. Her wavy brown hair and wide eyes paired with her delicate figure and intelligence had undone him completely.

Years later, when he was reading the Iliad, he realized his vision of Athena had acquired a Texan drawl.

 

Joe the Lion

“It tasted like lion’s blood,” Drusilla had said.

It was years since she’d thought of dear Joe. Spike had taken her to a circus as a treat for being very bad. She’d been enraptured by the acrobats and cotton candy, but when the lion act began, she cried pitifully despite Spike’s assurances she was safe.

Later, she’d nimbly slipped between the lion cage’s bars. The lion had come to her slowly, his eyes sad.

When Spike found her over the dead lion and scolded her for being reckless, she shook her head. He didn’t understand, but he would one day.

 

Things to Do

He’d told Dawn he had things to do, but the reality of the situation was much less colorful. After she’d left, he pulled out his “To Do” list… and was immediately ashamed he actually had a list.

1\. Repaint fingernails  
2\. Watch Twilight Zone marathon  
3\. Lurk under S’s window  
4\. Shoplift carton of Camels  
5\. Do laundry at local all-night laundromat  
6\. Floss  
7\. Avoid Harmony  
8\. Shag Harmony  
9\. Avoid Harmony  
10\. Pin photo of S’s boytoy to dartboard. Throw darts.  
11\. Make crank calls to Poofter in L.A.  
12\. Fold socks

He decided to get drunk instead.

 

May 30, 2004:

Beginnings

The Battle Begins

She was uncertain what had happened. Her body shook, and her breathing was labored. Carefully, she got to her feet. She was in a small, dark cave, though her eyes could see quite well.

Suddenly, with shrieks of rage, three creatures pounced on her. Instinct snapped into action, and she clutched a fragment of wood on the cave floor. An hour later, bleeding and howling pitifully, the girl stood over their dust, knowing she was no longer what she had been, that she was Other.

From the shadows, the wisemen nodded. She had passed the test. The Slayer was born.

 

The Toymaker

Few people in town were as beloved as the toymaker. The lines of his face formed a map of the smiles he bestowed on the children who visited him.

One night, as a thunderstorm lashed his windows, a traveler pounded on his front door.

“Come in,” he cried in pity. “Warm yourself by the fire and have something to eat.”

“I will,” said the vampire, who quickly bit the old man. For a lark, he opened one of his own veins, feeding him.

“I wonder what sort of vampire he’ll make,” said the demon, and thus the Master was made.

 

Toil and Trouble

Washing day had come, and Drusilla stirred the clothes with a long stick, her arm aching with the work as the water bubbled in the small kitchen. The shimmering steam became thicker, and with a start she saw a figure staring at her out of the vapor: a man with eyes as yellow as a cat’s and a face disfigured with bumps. Above his head, written in blood, was the word “DEATH.”

Drusilla’s scream brought her family around her, but she said she had fallen asleep standing up and had a nightmare. With clammy hands, she returned to her work.

 

Moving In

The movers had left, and Buffy and her mother were alone in this place that held no memories and nothing familiar. Surveying the sea of boxes, Buffy knew none of them contained a trace of her father, and the gaping hole added to her doubting this place would ever be home.

She climbed the stairs for what felt like the thousandth time that day and went to her room. Sitting on her bed, she tried to imagine the past was behind her and a future full of normal days lay before her.

The weapons trunk stared back at her silently.

 

Games

As dust filled the air, Xander thought of pollen. When they were kids, he, Jesse and Willow had played hide and seek in the park. Several times he had swatted Jesse with a pine branch, raising clouds of yellow dust, in retaliation for being found. Then Jesse would chase him around the park, screaming bloody murder.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said as he stared at where his friend had just been. He knew this was the first of many vampires he would kill. He wondered if each time he would think of those clinging clouds and feel this pain.

 

Better Than Oxy

Willow stared at the zit the size of Greenland decorating the tip of her nose. It seemed to throb with malevolence, and she could already hear Cordelia’s insults.

“Stupid chocolate bar,” she moaned as she tried in vain to cover the blemish with concealer.

A light came into her eyes as she remembered the spell she had seen on one of Miss Calendar’s webpages. Biting her lip in concentration, she stared in the mirror and bent her thoughts on covering the pimple.

Her eyes briefly darkened, but Willow didn’t notice as she delightedly watched the spot disappear behind a glamour.

 

New Recruit

The Watchers Academy was the most boring building Rupert had ever seen. It blended in with other buildings in London, but its gray stone exterior screamed no nonsense would be tolerated here.

He hefted his trunk, filled only with basic necessities for his austere life-to-be, onto his shoulder and went up the lift to his dormitory. He slammed his trunk at the end of the bed, hurriedly opening the lid.

In relief, he realized no one was the wiser that he had chucked his textbooks and replaced them with his complete collection of Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.

 

Early Signs

“What in tarnation have you done!” yelled Mr. Burkle as he stepped into his daughter’s bedroom.

Fred hung her head, the blue crayon still clutched in her hand declaring her guilt. Her wall was covered as high as she could reach with scrawlings.

As her father peered closer, he realized they weren’t random doodles. Numbers, letters and Greek symbol popped out at him, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to realize the truth.

“Fred? What is all this?” he asked.

“Theory of relativity,” the seven year old said as she scuffed the toe of her shoe on the carpet.

 

Once Bitten

Oz was a private person, more used to showing his presence through a nod than a spoken thought. However, with his cousin, he could be remarkably different.

Today, he sat with the little boy on his lap, reading him “Little Red Riding Hood.” As the green-haired bass player got to the part when the wolf gobbled up the grandmother, he impishly tickled his cousin, earning squeals of disapproval which soon turned into a loud “OW! from the teenager.

“Okay, so no tickling. Ever. Got ya,” Oz said as blood poured from the small cut on his finger. Jordy smiled innocently.

 

May 23, 2004:

Endings

Tantalus

The cement of the basement bites viciously into his back. The floor is littered with debris, the remains of something irretrievably broken.

Mistake cannot begin to describe what happened, and he knows it. Granted, it wasn’t his choice. She took what she wanted, the key word being what, not whom. For months he’d dreamed of her, obsessing over what it would be like to have her. Then, in the darkness of her absense, those dreams were hopeless, the soft feel of her skin and her loving murmurs mere painful phantoms.

He’s had the dream now, except it was a nightmare.

 

Emptiness

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Xander said.

“Yeah,” Buffy agreed morosely. “It’s hard to believe it went so fast.”

“This can’t be the end,” Willow said sadly. “It can’t!”

“Willow,” Giles said, patting her hand, “all good things must come to an end.”

The clacking of high heels on the library floor broke through their grief, and they looked up to see Cordelia glaring at them.

“Oh, please! It’s a box of donuts! If you’re that bummed about running out, go buy more!”

“They’re closed until tomorrow,” Xander said tearfully.

Cordelia blinked and walked away, muttering “losers” under her breath.

 

The Last Challenge

“Uh, guys? What just happened?” Gunn said in confusion.

“I am unsure where we are,” Illyria said, cocking her head to one side. “It is unlike any dimension I have visited.”

Angel and Spike were also completely baffled by the blank, grey world. The demons had disappeared, but so had everything else.

“Are we dead?” Gunn asked.

“No,” Spike said firmly. “There’s more burning with that.”

“Demon,” Angel said in a matter-of-fact voice as he spotted a strange creature heading towards them.

“Grrr. Arrgh,” it said nonchalantly, followed by “Gyah. Agh,” as Angel cleaved it in two with his sword.

 

May 16, 2004:  
Hands

Paradigm Shift

Reality shifted, threatening to hurtle him into oblivion. It wasn’t an unknown feeling for him. One like it had occured when he had stood over her motionless body, comprehending the unthinkable.

But that had been unadulterated horror, and this time he wasn’t sure what he felt. She was standing before him, a telltale rhythm telling him she was alive.

Carefully, as though the air might shatter, he touched her hands, and his fingers didn’t pass through her skin like mist.

But he knew as he touched her wounds that this unnatural miracle would have consequences beyond what he could foresee.

 

Tin Man

Spike stares at his bandaged-covered hands. He can’t feel them, but the numbing drugs will wear off. Oddly, he’s thinking of the Tin Man.

Dru loved Baum’s book, and he read it to her hundreds of times. The horrifying story of the Tin Man’s creation fascinated her: an enchanted ax carving away at him piece by piece, the parts replaced with ones of tin. Finally, he was nothing but metal, without even a heart.

Spike thinks of the things he has done with these hands, lives they’ve ended, and he half-wishes they’d given him ones of tin in their place.

 

Past Redrawn

Angel sits in his office at Wolfram & Hart, bathed in the sterilized glow of sunlight, the door barricaded against intruders with a simple statement to Harmony that if she let anyone in he’d fire her… with actual fire.

The quiet sound of pencil scratching against paper fills the office like whispered prayers in a church. They come readily from the lead: the slant of Buffy’s nose and the bow of Cordy’s grin, Fred’s wide eyes and Doyle’s rumpled hair, pages and pages of a baby smiling in delight. He makes with his hands the worlds that have fallen away.

 

May 9, 2004:  
Punishment

School Days

“You haven’t done your homework, William,” the schoolmaster said severely.

That morning, Archibald and his followers had come across the boy’s new route to school. The usual scene transpired: Archie threatened to pound the smaller boy senseless, and William fought back, trying to tug his slate away from his tormentors. They’d let him pull hard enough so that when they released it, the momentum sent him into a puddle along with the slate. With horrified eyes, William saw his homework fade away as the boys guffawed.

“Hold out your hand,” he was instructed as the schoolmaster brought out the cane.

Penance

Gunn stared at the ceiling, willing the demon to finish carving his heart out. In these moments he remembered who he was. He soon became the fake husband and father once more, but for now he could recall his life.

He saw her brown eyes laughing. Part of the torture, he supposed, but after seeing Fred’s image, he could willingly submit to having his heart removed, hoping someday she could forgiveness him.

One day, the image threw aside his demon, and his heart leapt. But when her cold blue eyes turned on him, he knew his punishment would never end.

 

Nightmare Reality

The bloodloss is so bad he knows soon he’ll faint. But they’re there, the shadows, shapes with voices of metal. The girl from the club in the twenties, her eyes enormous with fear, urges him onward. The man from Istanbul at the turn of the century, his throat bleeding rivers, screams for retribution. The little boy from Vienna, the one he handed to Dru as though he were a jam tart, smiles evilly.

So Spike sinks the knife into his chest again, knowing he could scrape to bone and they will never be appeased, but helpless to do anything else.

 

Evened Out

As all the pain and desperation to complete his mission happened, a little part of Doyle’s brain stood back and watched.

He kept his back to Angel and Cordelia. Any sight of them would be too much: Cordelia’s eyes brimming with tears, or Angel’s broad shoulders slumping (he was a little attracted, after all). But he could glimpse the demons, and mixed with their faces were those of ones he should have saved. It was fitting he give his life for not saving theirs.

As the beacon calmed, the last thing he saw was those ghostly faces smiling in welcome.

 

Stuck

I am bored beyond mortal comprehension. Infomercial-watching bored. This guy never does anything fun. He won’t eat chocolate because it’s too fatty, and the world might end if he doesn’t finish his damn anatomy essay on time.

Okay, I was naughty. I made the other hellgods sorta nervous with the maiming and the boiling in oil and the maiming and the wanton destruction of life and the maiming. God, I miss the maiming… But did they have to stick me inside Mr. Goody Two Shoes? I mean, come on. There’s no way I was ever evil enough to deserve this!

 

The Risk

He knew she was dead. The tilt of her neck was a little wrong, her legs slightly askew, her eyes windows with no light behind them.

An image of one of his teachers leapt to mind, stating words he had once considered ludicrous.

“While Watchers may have loved ones, even marry if they desire, becoming close to others is perilous and can even prove fatal.”

The bottle slipped to the floor, smashing into a thousand pieces, the wine soaking the floor like blood. This was his punishment for his selfish desire to love. He had killed Jenny, no one else.

 

Background Noise

In Pylea, images never filled Lorne’s mind, but no one sang there. It’s the one thing he misses: silence inside his brain.

Yesterday, he was getting a Coke when a woman with earphones jogged past, singing along to the B-52’s. Immediately, he knew she was an alcoholic. A guy in an elevator hummed tunelessly, and he knew he was cheating on his wife. A secretary whistled Springsteen, and he knew she’d be dead tomorrow.

Lorne loves music, but when his brain is reeling from the messages screaming from unexpected directions, he wonders what horrible thing he’s done to deserve this.

 

Pining

Xander’s dreams don’t forgive him. During the day, he builds things or e-mails his friends funny stories of his hunt for Twinkies in Madagascar.

But at night, he can’t keep the dreams away. She comes to him in her wedding dress, her hair a blaze of gold bright as sunlight. It burns his eyes, but he can’t look away. He reaches for her, desperate to hold her again.

“You’re the one who turned me away,” she says, her eyes full of tears.

In the mornings, he gets up, pretends to be happy, fun, lovable Xander, while dreading the coming night.

 

Special of the Day

Okay, Buffy thought, I got myself into this. I promised I’d spend more time with Dawn, and I did say she should start doing more chores. She’s showing initiative. That’s of the good, right?

I just really should have specified exactly what chores she’s supposed to do.

“Uh, Dawn?” Buffy asked in what she hoped was a warm, loving, and nurturing tone of voice. “What the hell are we eating?”

“Duh. It’s cereal!” Dawn said with an eyeroll.

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

Buffy poked the blackened, quivering mass on her plate, smiled wanly, and prayed they had Pepto in Italy.

 

Sheep

A run of unimaginative wishes requiring the deceiving man to drop dead without fanfare had given Anyanka a case of ennui. Her creativity was blocked. Then this little gem had happened her way.

“Sheep number 345, step right up!” she called merrily as the shepherd’s face, already blanched white, began to turn green. “Oh, cheer up,” she said, displaying uncharacteristic camaraderie with her victim because of her pleasant mood. “She could have wished for it to be every sheep in the village. You’ve got only 39 to go!”

Wendell, the shepherd with the wandering eye, swayed slightly and passed out.

There’s a Limit

Faith knows she’s done wrong. She had murdered and revelled in it. She had tossed aside every law like a candy bar wrapper. She’d lied and stolen, seduced and beaten, walked away from her sacred duty and joined the team of the forces she’d been put on this earth to fight.

She accepts she has punishment coming. That was why she’d turned herself in, knowing that jail would be the outcome. She wants to make amends. But there is a limit.

Still, as she stands in the chow line, she can’t help repeating mentally, “Please, not the butterscotch pudding again.”

 

Why Hell Is Hell

There is no time in hell. Perpetual torment erodes the senses like a glacier erodes a mountain, wearing it away until nothing is left, creating grooves so deep that the mind falls into them and becomes lost.

Angel has known torture ever since the sword pinned him against Acathla, but at first he held up bravely. Blood, bruises, smashed bones, all had little effect.

That is, until the demons got nasty.

Now he lies on the floor, hands clutched over his ears, wailing in misery as Richard Nixon launches into yet another rendition of “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

 

May 2, 2004:  
Books (there are both books as objects and crossovers in this batch)

Left Unread

Tara was dead. Dawn had trouble grasping it even after all she had experienced. She had spent hours staring into the lifeless eyes of the young woman who had seemed so strong yet fragile. Later events had distracted her from the harsh reality.

Now, with Willow in England and Buffy at work, Dawn was alone, and for the first time she noticed the worn bag in the living room. Tara’s. Inside were textbooks: biology, chemistry, history. Her hands reached out to stroke them, and a few pages of notes in Tara’s curved handwriting fell to the floor.

And Dawn wept.

 

Purging the Soul

Angelus had dealt with the Slayer. The hurt in her eyes was ambrosia, more delicious than the virgin blood of a saint. And he’d know.

Afterwards, he scavenged through the soul’s belongs, shoving cash into his pocket, grabbing a bottle of whiskey, and he was about to leave when he saw the book.

The Confessions of St. Augustine had been Angel’s favorite, and the dog-eared pages testified to his desperate hope he could find his own path to some sort of salvation.

Angelus’s disjointed laugh split the air as he drew his nails across the pages, shredding them to ribbons.

 

Stacks from the Stacks

The contents of the Sunnydale High School library had been saved, and the boxes littered Giles’s living room. And kitchen. And dining room. And bath. And stairs.

“You kinda have a problem here,” Xander said, cracking his back. “There’s no floor left and twenty boxes to go.”

“So, which ones do we chuck?” Buffy asked, sweating from the hauling.

“Chuck? No! We’ll move these back to the van and procure a rental locker,” he declared, clearly thinking Buffy’s idea blasphemy.

“Move them again?” Xander said, turning pale.

“Of course,” he said, but when he turned around, he was completely alone.

 

Bedtime

For a minute, Spike looked at Drusilla’s form on the bed, her limbs curled around her body as though fending off an attack. He knew the truth: she was worse. In spite of his desire to break everything in sight, his voice was gentle when he spoke.

“Luv? What will you have tonight?”

Her eyes fluttered open, and a weak smile played on her lips. “The Twelve Dancing Princesses, my sweet.”

He took the slim volume from the shelves crammed with children’s books, sat on the edge of the bed, and read in a soft, clear voice, his heart breaking.

 

Nothing But Words

Buffy had left him yet again, telling him for the thousandth time they were over. She’d be back. He might mean nothing to her but a cold body to release her frustrations on, but for that much he was worth something.

She’d return. She had to. He had nothing else.

He pushed aside the shattered remains of his record collection to expose an indentation in the wall. He pulled out his book, the one he had kept for decades without anyone, even Dru, knowing it existed.

His poetry fell apart in his hands, riddled by bullets. There was nothing left.

 

Parallelism

Angel spent hours trying to find the perfect gift, desperate to tell Buffy what lay in his heart but couldn’t be spoken. He’d finally remembered Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnets from the Portugese. It was perfect, he’d thought.

Elizabeth and Robert were forced to wait, their love forbidden. It seemed they would never be together, but at long last they married, and Elizabeth had given Robert these poems, written in secret during their sometimes hopeless courtship, showing her constant love. Silently, he begged her to understand.

And his heart fell when she saw nothing but paper and ink in her hands.

The Roaring 20’s

“This is what I call a party!” Spike yelled to Drusilla over the loud jazz. Illegal gin practically flowed from the front door of the posh East Egg estate, and the boisterous guests had drunk enough to be extremely giddy.

As the Charleston ended to raucous applause, he pulled his pretty flapper close, kissing her with an unselfconscious lust that perfectly fitted the debauched scene.

“Naughty boy,” she growled, relishing the night as much he. “Shall we eat?”

“Okay, Luv,” he agreed, grinning. “But not this Gatsby bloke. Gotta respect hospitality that’ll leave me snockered for at least two days.”

 

From Far Away

“Okay,” Xander stared at the strange visitor. “You were in the woods one minute, and the next you’re here?”

The figure nodded politely, turning his gaze back to Giles.

“Do you know how I have come to be here?” he asked.

“Probably a portal,” Giles said uncertainly. “We’ll work on fixing things. It’s lucky Xander found you.”

“I am most grateful,” he said.

“Giles?” Willow called, running through the library doors. “What’s up? You said there was… oh my…”

Legolas took one look at the red-headed witch and reconsidered the situation.

“There is no rush, Lord Giles,” he said, smiling.

 

Sorting Things Out

Angel had been in embarassing situations. A Xyltxc demon set the seat of his trousers afire in the middle of Broadway. Spike took photographs of him in the shower and wallpapered the steno pool’s lounge with them. None of them compared to this.

The Powers had said the apocolypse would come from this dimension, and if he was going to stay, he had to follow the rules.

“Gryffindor! No… Slytherin! No… Gryffindor! Slyth… Griff… Oh, Dumbledore, I give up!” the Sorting Hat shrieked.

The wizard smiled at Angel. “I think perhaps you should just share Hagrid’s cabin during your stay.”

 

April 25, 2004:  
Minor (Non-Opening Credits) Characters

Cecily, Take One

He’s here! How did he get an invitation? I’m sure Archibald did it. That man has the worst sense of humor, and this reeks of being one of his jests. I am, however, most certainly not amused. One poor guest can ruin a party, but William? William being invited to one of my gatherings could ruin my reputation for a week.

I won’t look at him. If I don’t look, he’s not there. Why can’t that moronic, gawkish egghead just disintegrate into dust?

Blast. He’s seen me. I swear, if he’s brought one of those ridiculous poems, I’ll kill him.

 

Cecily, Take Two

I knew he would come, but when I see William’s eyes practically worshipping me from the bottom of the stairs, I wish he hadn’t.

If I told him the truth, that since I was ten Father has had my marriage arranged to a man whom I do not love, though another does hold that place, I know what William would say. But I can’t allow myself to be swayed. It would mean being disowned, breaking Mother’s heart, abandoning my family.

But I shant have him pity me. Instead, I shall make him hate me. May God forgive me, my love.

 

Cecily, Take Three

 

He’s arrived. This is the most elaborate set up for a wish I’ve ever gone through, but it should be worth it.

I usually leave the spurned-woman thing to Anyanka, but a justice demon does what a justice demon must. When Rosalie fell in love with William’s father only to have him marry Anne instead, she wished about the most fabulous wish I’ve ever come across.

“I wish Leroy would drop dead, and if he has any children with that little witch first, may they drop dead at least twice!”

Looks like it’s time to cue up that first death.

 

Chao-Ahn

These people are crazy. Last week, I got a telegram saying I’m a carrot killer. That made no sense. They re-translated it; I’m actually a vampire slayer, which still made no sense. However, the demons with no eyes made perfect sense, and I understood the Englishman when he said “safe,” so I came here.

“Here” is a house with seventy people… and one bathroom. A vampire who may or may not be crazy lives in the basement. The Slayer makes long speeches though three-quarters of us do not speak English.

I’m considering working for the demon-people. They seem more reasonable.

 

Bon Voyage

Aud was trouble. My father told me it would be so. Anyone who liked rabbits as much as she was wrong in the head, he said. She proved to be a most aggravating little thing.

Not saying it wasn’t worth it. The wench had zest.

Now the blasted witch has managed to send me somewhere, and I am whirling through empty space. At least I will not be trapped in another rock.

Abruptly, I hit solid ground, but there is something strange about it. It is too spongey. I look around in confusion as I stare at endless fields of…shrimp?

 

April 18, 2004:  
Sex

The Most Demure Sex Scene Ever

Angel and Spike walked into a room. There may or may not have been a bed in it. Perhaps there was some sort of scent in the air. Some things started to happen. Then more things happened. After that, still more things happened. It was very pleasant. Then they fell asleep. Then they woke up, and more of those things happened again. After that, they ate something for breakfast, possibly involving chocolate. As they couldn’t stay in the room that may or may not have had a bed in it forever, they then left the room. They were rather happy.

 

Vacancy

Willow stared at the pattern of ceiling cracks overhead, willing herself not to think about what had happened. Unfortunately, a nearby snore anchored her all-too-firmly in reality.

Kennedy was next to her. Kennedy was next to her and naked. Kennedy was next to her and naked and Willow was naked. None of that was unexpected, really. It had been bound to happen sooner or later.

What was unexpected was the loneliness pervading her. For the first time, sex had brought not closeness but emptiness. Rolling onto her side, distancing herself from the other girl, she quietly sobbed herself to sleep.

 

Question

Spike was staring at Angel, and it was getting annoying .

“Say something or get out,” he said, shuffling papers importantly.

“Have we shagged?”

Angel blinked. “What?”

“You. Me. Shagged,” Spike said. “People want to know. Me too, comes to that.”

Angel sighed. “If I say anything, the subtext dies.”

“Come on! I just want to know my own orientation!”

“If you don’t know whether we’ve ‘shagged,’ how would I?”

Spike frowned. “Good point. Guess we’ll never know.”

“No. Now go gaze in a possibly lustful manner at Gunn or Wesley while I may possibly be obsessing over Lindsey.”

“Right.”

 

April 11, 2004:  
Tarot Cards

Death

Buffy has died so often that the word is meaningless, she sometimes thinks. The Master, Glory, even Warren made her cross from life into something else.

Those times were simple. Other deaths mark her, and those have been more terrifying. The death of trust when Angel turned. The death of belief in justice when she killed him. The death of innocence when she tried to take Faith’s life. The death of security when her mother died.

But of all her deaths, the one that destoyed her was when she was pulled back to life. That was the death of joy.

 

Readings  
She shuffles the deck, knowing the moment fate tells her to stop, but she pauses, unsure she wants to read the signs.

The Tower appears, the image frought with death, whirling into chaos. Yes, that started it all.

The second. The Magician funnels energy from above into the earth, working miracles. Once again, it was fated.

Drawing one final card. Judgement Day faces her, calling the dead from their graves. Smiling, Willow decides the cards say she was right to bring Buffy back.

She stops, not realizing the next card shows the Devil’s eyes blazing at her in her pride.

 

Queen of Swords

Anya knows she’s dead. There’s her body, practically in two pieces, laying on the floor, but she’s still here.

Andrew is peering down at her during a pause in the onslaught, and she realizes he’s turning white and a telltale green.

“For pity’s sake!” she yells soundlessly. “Don’t throw up on me!”

When the enemy comes at him again, he shoulders the sword once more, and though he completely misses every one of them, he never sees the spirit sword wielded invisibily around him, driven by one whose spirit was too strong to give up the battle even in death.

 

April 4, 2004:  
Tori Amos Song Titles

The Waitress

No one asks about her. She blends in like cracks in the tabletops or burns in the upholstery. She arrives each day on time, and the boss thinks that’s a little unusual, but she does as she’s told and never makes a fuss.

But some things don’t fit. There are no tracks on her arms unlike the other girls he hires under the table, yet sometimes it seems to take all her strength just to keep breathing because something inside hurts too much.

He’ll be surprised if Anne lasts another month in this place without leaving, one way or another.

 

Heart Attack at 23

Giles should have gotten used to the morgue long ago, but it always chilled him when he realized this is where they would all end. Tonight was his turn to check the new arrivals for vampire attacks. One vault revealed a young, blonde woman. Somehow he knew that he would find twin punctures on her throat.

Giles checked her chart and was releaved to see she had died almost three days ago. She would not rise. Frowning, he saw the cause of death listed as “heart attack.” With a pitying look at the corpse, he closed the vault once more.

 

Beauty Queen

Cordelia had been elected May Queen. One cheerleader had been popular enough to give her a challenge, but in the end the victory went to Cordy, as always.

A coterie of girls were helping to fit her dress, and she critqued their work with a sharp eye. The pink and white confection was already perfect, but one could never be perfect enough.

She looked at the girls around her, each one murmuring how happy they were she had gotten the honor. She knew they were lying. And her heart twisted a little more in the loneliness of their false adoration.

 

Sister Janet

Drusilla was confused when she opened her eyes. Fear coursed through her, but she couldn’t feel her heart racing as it always did when she was afraid.

She slowly sat up and stared at the horrible scene around her. A few paces away was Sister Janet, who had given her sanctuary, allowing her into the convent even though some had said she was a cursed thing. Her sightless eyes stared at the ceiling, her neck bent at an impossible angle.

“Thank you, Sister,” Drusilla said as she gently closed the woman’s dead eyes, “but they were quite right, you see.”

 

London Girls

The rustling of women’s dresses sounded like the flutter of angels’ wings to William. That was perverse, he was sure. He shouldn’t, as a gentleman, think about such unmentionable things as petticoats in the presense of ladies, he told himself. His eyes shouldn’t be tempted to follow the lines of their bodices, and his thoughts should never dwell on what lay beneath the layers of silk and lace and whalebone.

Still, as the pretty misses promendaded past his bench in the park, he had to train his eyes to his book to keep from looking upon them with impure thoughts.

 

Bliss

Angel stared in disbelieving wonder at Buffy, who was sleeping soundly. This was not what he intended. His dreams of making of love to her had been full of candlelight and soft music. He had never expected her first time to happen in his cinderblock basement apartment as Armageddon approached.

But it had. His trembling hand brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. She stirred slightly, and, still sleeping, nestled closer to him in perfect trust. It was in that moment he realized he had at last been accepted as he was.

It was in that moment bliss came.

 

Wednesday  
Morning came, as it always did. The sun rose in the east, the rays poking at her eyes uncermoniously. Buffy groaned in protest, rolling over and stubbornly pulling her head beneath the pillow before realizing what had happened.

The sheets were rough, and the bed didn’t smell like her own. A series of images flashed through her mind’s eye: a flaming hand, a desperate race across rooftops while the world fell in behind her, and a crater yawning where home had once been.

Yesterday, she had thought of tomorrow with hope. Today, she could only think of yesterday with despair.

 

March 28, 2004:  
Someone Bleeding in an Alley/Anniversary Drabble

Unexpected

This wasn’t how he planned to spend his evening. Things had started out average enough: pints, prostitutes, a plot to filch his father’s silver.

But then that girl whose skin glowed like living pearl appeared, and things ran wildly outside the normal path. Even when she’d bitten him and fed her blood down his throat, he’d felt he was moving in some dream.

But then she dropped him to the pavement, her laughter in his ears. She left. The cobbles, wet with his lifeblood, bit into his cheek, and as lay there, he had only one thought.

“I’ll be damned.”

 

Pausing

She stared at the chain. Its rust had stained her hands. She knew she should run; her mind was screaming at her to move, but she felt paralyzed.

Ben lay at her feet, bleeding, which she kept telling herself was a good thing. But what if he was dead? What if she’d killed him? Then she saw the smallest of movements in his hands, and for a moment relief flooded her before she realized what else that might mean.

She turned to run, but it was too late.

“Ow!” she heard from too near. “That really hurt, you little puke.”

 

The Last Anniversary

Buffy couldn’t help the dispairing laugh that crept from her lips, accompanied by a bubble of blood. Nine years ago exactly she had been called. There had been thousands of vampires since, most now dust. Sometimes it seemed all her life had played itself out in alleys. Now it was going to end in a tiny, centuries-old one in the worst part of Rome.

She lay on the ground, her hand gripping the dust of her vanquished attacker, clutching it in her fist.

“I’m sorry it had to be me, Dawnie,” she said softly, “but at least we went together.”

 

March 21, 2004:  
Eating/Food Drabble

Motherhood

Many years have passed since she last held a baby to her breast. She caresses the blonde head, remembering her other one, older now, off on his own.

But this little one needs all she can give. She croons to her, supporting the head, eyes shining as she nourishes her, chasing away the shadows.

She’d wanted to feed her sooner, but Daddy wouldn’t allow it. Even now he’d stop her if he could. His would tear her little one’s head from her breast, but she meets his gaze. As Darla’s laps falter, her mummy knows they are a family again.

 

Scene from a Cafeteria

“For a mega-evil corporation, you think they’d have better sushi,” Lorne said, slamming his tray down in disgust across from Spike. “How’s the blood? Taste like styrofoam?”

Spike looked up, stunned the demon was talking to him. He’d always been friendly enough, but Lorne had never sought out his company.

“Terrible. Besides, I don’t trust where it comes from. The hot chocolate isn’t bad, though,” he said, smiling uncertainly.

“Hey, they’ve got little marshmallows? I just love those. Back in a jiff,” Lorne declared as he jogged to the cocoa machine.

So began their afternoon ritual of chocolate and bonding.

 

Never the Same

When Buffy was little, Joyce always baked her a triple-tiered chocolate birthday cake and iced it with homemade fudge frosting, sandwiching banana slices between each layer. The smell was heavenly, and it was forever associated with happy times when birthdays meant presents and laughter, not impending doom.

Buffy’s birthday has come again. Maybe it’s because she’s lost every landmark of her old life, but she finds herself missing her mother even more than ever. She stares at the lopsided chocolate cake she’s baked, iced with canned frosting, and she begins to laugh until she throws it against the wall, sobbing.

 

March 7, 2004:  
Free Drabble: Anything goes. I chose to tie up some loose ends.

Wishes

He'd heard about it once in an off-handed remark made by someone he barely tolerated: a shaman with power to work miracles.

Now he found himself standing before two glowing eyes in a dark African cave. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten there, but that didn't matter. He cleared his throat, trying to speak without stammering.

"You'll hold up your end of the deal, right? I mean, hey, not my fault somebody already killed your bugs and your flame guy. You'll grant my wish?"

"Very well," chuckled a deep voice. "We will return to you the human called Anya."

 

Breakfast

Nina looked around the Wolfram & Hart cafeteria warily. First dates were always awkward, but this? Was dating a puppet even legal?

After they'd passed through the line, a mushroom omelette on her tray and a sippy cup of blood on Angel's, he sat in a booster chair to see over the table.

"So..." she said, staring at the cup, then Angel's lack of a throat.

"Uh," he responded. "Maybe I should have ordered those styrofoam cookies puppets always seem to eat."

Nina giggled as the frowning mouth broke into a pseudo-grin. She'd had worse first dates... but none weirder.

 

Closure

"I tell ya, Archie, if we don't get some decent-sized tuna soon, the boss'll have our hides," said the old man as he piloted his boat towards what he hoped was a better fishing site. Archie nodded gruffly.

However, when they pulled in their nets, they were stunned.

"Well, they're plenty big," Archie said sensibly. "And they're sure not dolphins. Whaddaya say?"

"I say lop 'em up and bring 'em in," he declared as they headed towards shore.

Soon, several tuna fish cans sat innocently on a supermarket shelf. And that was the end of the Sunnydale High swim team.

 

Feb. 22, 2004:  
Elements Challenge: Use any of the four elements as the basis for a drabble

Tormenting the Damned, Piece 1 (water)

William was worried. Each evening when he awoke, Drusilla would be staring at him, heartbroken and weeping. Burns marked her forehead, her right hand, her shoulders, but she refused to tell him where they came from.

"I'm a bad girl and must be punished," she would repeat, inconsolable.

Finally, he feigned sleep one day. Through slitted eyes he saw her open one of the bottles on her dresser, and he nearly screamed when he smelled charred flesh as she crossed herself repeatedly.

"I love a man in carnal pleasure. Forgive me my disobedience to Daddy. Forgive my most grievous fault."

 

Tormenting the Damned, Piece 2 (earth)

For ninety years, Angel never slept in a bed. Instead, he would lay on the floor, preferrably one of bare earth. Barring that, he slept in the filth of the alleys, always rising with grime on his face.

His guilt screamed at him, the faces of countless thousands he had murdered with a kiss swarmed around him, and when at last weariness became too great and he had to endure his nightmares as penance, he pillowed his head against the dirt.

It was his one hope: that someday he would do as the priest had said, and return to dust.

 

Tormenting the Damned, Piece 3 (fire)

Darla stared out the window of Lindsey's office, listlessly watching the sunset. It was beautiful, full of reds and oranges, the sun reflecting off countless panes of glass and bits of metal in the city, creating a thousand tiny, diamond-bright replicas of itself that hurt her eyes. She should be burning now, her mind thought in some faraway corner.

But whether she meant that as a vampire she would have incinerated in this light she hadn't seen for centuries or that her soul belonged in a pit of hell as ruby-colored with eternal flame as the sky, she didn't know.

 

Feb. 15, 2004:  
The Livejournal Moods Challenge: Write a fic centered on one of the lj moods

Post-Battle Problems (nauseated)

Der Kinderstodd was now dead. Buffy, however, felt like she was about five seconds from joining him.

Why couldn't "immunity to up-chucking" be part of the Slayer package? Her stomach was doing back flips more acrobatic than anything she'd ever pulled off even in her most intricate battles, and the green gelatin she'd had for lunch today kept floating before her eyes, its green color slowly painting her cheeks.

"Buffy? You're not gonna yak on me, are ya?" asked Xander nervously.

She shook her head in determination, but three steps later..

"I'll take that as a big, icky, owe-me-a-new-pair-of-shoes yes."

 

Spark of Madness (crazy)

The basement is cold and dark like what's been inside his head and heart for a hundred and some years. Things swish above his head, angels with black-feathered wings and the disembodied screams made visible in puffs of murder-colored mist.

And the basement is hot as hell where he was told he'd burn for stealing a stick of licorice from the candy store. He'd cried all night, afraid his heart would stop beating and the devil would come to take him, for that's what happened to naughty boys

He's here now.

"Better late than never," he calls to empty air.

 

For Joyce (touched)

It was a long day for everyone, but perhaps longest for her. She stood beside her girls, telling them she still loved them, but the clouds of grief were too thick to pierce.

Buffy stands beside her grave, and for the first time Joyce is happy to see Angel. She blesses him for saying what she cannot.

Turning to go, she notices something tiny and unassuming beside her grave. A ragtag cluster of daises tied with frayed string sits on the upturned earth. She remembers telling Spike she loved their simplicity and friendliness. Smiling at this heartfelt gift, she leaves.

 

Feb. 8, 2004:  
Doorways Challenge

Echoes Silenced

The Hyperion was always too large for them. Dozens of rooms made up each floor, and most sat empty as forgotten tombs.

Angel's room was different. It felt less like a hotel room than a place with history behind it. In time, new history was written over the old: the return of a woman he'd thought dead, and the place where he cradled his unexpected son in sleep.

They're leaving today. He takes one last look, remembering events that took place here, and dwelling finally on the butterscotch voice of one who has fallen asleep. Then, he shuts the door.

 

Unconventional Fairytale

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She learned to spell her name with quavering letters in pink crayon, proudly declaring who she was.

Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She discovered her name wasn't hers. She was a timebomb of too many possibilities. She bled, and she cried, and she accepted who she was.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman. She found her sister again, but she couldn't find herself. Not the child of imagination, not the portal to Armageddon, the door still looms before her of who she will be.

 

The Trade Off

He doesn't understand what's happened yet. He stands outside the door of his home, unable to enter, confusion written on his face. Through the open frame, he can see the clock on the mantle, ticking away minutes that have lost all meaning. His ears hear each click of the gears clearly, but despite his new-found strength, his body refuses to cleave the air standing between him and the hearth. In frustration, he rams the barrier repeatedly, each time repulsed, and a terrible feeling of comprehension dawns.

"Silly boy," his companion answers his unasked question, smiling knowingly, "you aren't welcome anymore."

 

Feb. 1, 2004:  
The Dictionary.com Challenge: Use word of the day for your birthday

Broadening the Mind (captious: given to complaining)

"Harmony!" yelled Angel over the intercom. "In here! Now!"

"Righty-oh, Boss," she said hopelessly.

When she arrived, he took a deep breath-- never a good sign.

"Today, my blood was so hot it burned my tongue, you disconnected the president of the Demon Peace Summit, got nail polish on a sacrificial urn, and you're breaking the dress code with that... thing...," he gestured emphatically at her minidress.

Harmony's face screwed up, then she shrieked, "You're so... captious!" while running from the room.

As Harmony patted her Word-A-Day calendar, Angel tried to decide whether to buzz Harmony and ask for a dictionary.

 

Homeless (wayworn: tired of traveling)

Rome is the eternal city, but to Buffy it's the end of an eternity of wandering. Sunnydale was the place she had protected, even if it cost her life, the place that held her happiest memories, and plenty of sad ones too, the place she and her friends had been bonded together.

Scattered to the winds, the Scoobies are living on separate continents. She'd tried London but felt she was intruding on Giles's life. France, Spain, Switzerland, even Luxemburg: nothing was right. When the wayworn sisters felt they couldn't go another step, they settled in Rome.

But it isn't home.

 

Benison (benison: a blessing or benediction)

He's been hanging about like that one lonely guy in every bar at closing time, he thinks. Dennis moved on long ago. After he'd died, the other ghost had helped him adjust, and Cordy never realized there were really two phantoms. Around Christmas, Dennis left. He'd been the one to care for Cordelia when the visions hit... and occasionally gawk at her in the tub.

But it's time. Her eyes have been closed for a year, and he doesn't feel his place is here anymore.

"Love you, gorgeous," Doyle says as he presses a kiss to her forehead and dissolves.

 

Jan. 25, 2004:  
The Seven Virtues and Vices Challenge

Shadows Seen (Charity)

"There you are," the girl said kindly as an elderly man dressed in tatters took the bread.

Suddenly, she stopped dead still, her back so straight she seemed to be pulled heavenward by a wire in her skull, her wide eyes staring.

"A pale gold rose of death waits near, dipped in blood," she murmured.

"It's cold," she called to the remaining poor. "The good Father will let you sleep in church. Leave none behind."

As the people left, Darla, who had chosen to hunt those no one would miss, smiled. A seer. She and Angelus had a new toy.

 

Jan. 18, 2004:  
Write a Character-Pairing-Genre That is Unusual for You Challenge

Close Enough to Heaven

He knows it will end in destruction and pain, but he doesn't care. That's where his life has always been headed.

Angel spent time in hell, and they've all had pain, but none of them can comprehend what it means to have all his memories, all his childhood, the setting of his entire life, be hell.

Until her.

He can't remember this place, but perhaps some part of him recalls a scent, a voice, a feel of soft skin, something gentle. It was her. For the first time since then, he feels safe. How can he help but love her?

 

Solace

She was drowning when they met, not that anyone saw. Angel was dead, at her hands, and being devoured by endless flames for eternity.

Willow and Xander, even Giles, couldn't understand. Most saw nothing but a just end to a monster. They hadn't seen his eyes.

She needed to love again before her heart shut down forever. The thought of another man hurt unbearably, but this… she could do this.

Buffy looked at Faith's face, innocent in sleep, and pressed a kiss to the lips of her other self, her fellow freak of nature, then curled into her embrace again.

 

Welcome Home

The movements beneath the sheet were growing increasingly more urgent and fevered. In the darkness, only the vaguest shadows could be seen, as if their outlines had been drawn with lead on black paper.

The moans were becoming louder from both of them, and as his body arched upwards in ecstacy, her hand reached out to touch his scar before he fell panting atop her.

"I love you," he whispered raggedly in the following silence.

"Love you too," his wife replied. "You've been gone too long. Next time the brass has you track a demon through Mongolia, find it quicker."

 

What the...?

Connor rubbed his belly and stared in the mirror again. Granted, what had happened between him and Cordelia wasn't safe sex, but this was ridiculous. Either his father had neglected to tell him several entire chapters of the birds and the bees, or something was very wrong.

Shaking his head, he padded in slippered feet down the stairs of the tenement, holding his aching back, oblivious that he'd be giving birth to a fully grown African-American woman in a few days, and wandered off to see if he could scare up chocolate ripple ice cream and tuna during an apocolypse.

 

Jan. 11, 2004:  
The Crossover Challenge

Similarities

He was going to strangle Angel for this. Spike, unbelievably, was now counselor at Hogwarts.

"So, Draino," Spike said, bored.

"Draco," the boy spat.

"Whatever. Says here you set fire to this kid Granger's robes," he said, reading the report.

"She wasn't in them. I don't see why they're making such a big deal. She's just a muggle! She's annoying, drives me crazy, and pokes her nose in where it doesn't belong," Draco yelled, punching the arm of the chair.

"Uh-huh. Does she have stupid hair?" Spike asked knowingly.

"Yes, now you mention it. Why?"

"Thought so," the vampire smirked.

 

A Cup of Sugar

No sooner had Ward, Wally and Beaver left than June realized she was out of sugar. Normally she would borrow some from Mrs. Finn, but she was vacationing in Iowa. Maybe that new couple who had moved in after the Greens left so suddenly...

June hesitated because the shades were down, but she knocked anyway. The pale, dark-haired wife answered.

"Excuse me, but may I borrow a cup of sugar?" she asked.

The woman stared, then slammed the door. As June left, she heard her wail "Spike! It's a crazy woman who does housework in pearls and heels! I'm frightened!"

 

Wild West

"What's your name?" asked the saloon owner, cleaning a glass.

"Darla. I heard Dodge was wild, but it seems... peaceful."

"Yep," said the other woman, smiling. "That's Marshall Dillon's doing."

Suddenly, five outlaws barged through the doors of the Long Branch. Before Darla could move, Kitty pulled the shotgun from behind the bar and killed two. The other three ran.

"Course, a few haven't gotten the word," she said, cleaning the glass once more.

Darla blinked. "I'll be moving on, but first I'm buying you a drink."

"That's right nice of ya!"

"Could you teach me to shoot like that?"

 

Nice Niece

"Sammy, gimme another beer, okay?"

"I'll get it in a sec, Cliff. I've never seen so many customers," Sam said, scrabbling to fill twelve orders. "It's a good thing Carla's niece is helping out. She's legal age, right?"

"Yeah," the waitress lied while slammeing a tray of glasses on the bar. "She's a weird kid, but she's good in a pinch."

Speaking of a pinch, one of the customers took that opportunity to goose the new employee. As Faith dragged the drunk from his seat and tossed him up the stairs leading to the street, Carla beamed widely.

"That's my girl!"

 

Jan. 4, 2004:  
The Title Swap Challenge: Use an episode title in a fic not dealing with the events of that episode

Placebo

The devil knows I've tried. It's pathetic how I natter on about you to anyone kind enough or terrified enough to listen. Some pretend to understand, but they can't. Even I don't understand. We're one, you and I, and now I'm incomplete.

I'm dating again. I hate that word: "dating." Makes me sound like one of those idiot schoolchildren, but with her it's the right word to use: she's as teeny-bopperish as they come. "Take some new infection to thine eye" is supposedly the cure, but this infection is just irritating. My princess, I only have eyes for you.

 

Façade

She knows what she's become to them: the witch. It's all they see when they look at her, speak to her, inch their way out of the room. Once upon a time, she was Willow. The popular kids had pushed her around, and there were times she wondered what it would be like to be feared.

Now she knows, and she doesn't like it. Rather than faithful-dog-geiser person, computer nerd extaordinaire, she's the pinless grenade. They have forgiven her, but trust? Those days are as dead as the girl with the timid smile and gentle eyes of long ago.

 

Unexpected

Buffy Summers is sick of life shouting "Surprise!" She was a normal girl; surprise, she's a Slayer. She gave herself to the man she loved; surprise, he's evil. She killed him; surprise, he's back. She relied on him; surprise, he moves to L.A. She dates Joe Normal; surprise, he's a government agent. Her mother recovers from brain surgery; surprise, she dies of an aneurysm. She dies; surprise, she's resurrected. She decides Spike is evil; surprise, he gets a soul. She thinks she's seen the worst; surprise, meet the First.

And now, again, surprise, the phone rings.

"What's a shanshu?"

 

Dealing

When Xander and Willow were little, they loved to play cards. When Sheila and Ira would decide that Willow, at ten, was old enough to stay home by herself for a week, or when Xander's father became so drunk even his mother couldn't pretend things were fine, they would go to the treehouse in his backyard and get out the old deck.

"Got any nines?"

"Nope. Go fish."

And all the problems would go away. Now, she's in the hospital, unconscious, and the doctors doubt she'll wake up. But he knew she always cheated; she'll win this round yet.

 

Nov. 30, 2003:  
The Origin Challenge

Begin Again

The power breaks upon the gaggle of girls like a tsunami crushing a dam's aged stonework. Willow succeeded. From the moment Buffy realized the source of her solitary path had been frightened men of long ago making a girl their marionette warrior, she felt a gnawing in her gut.

On this day, the story is rewritten. The Slayer won't have her genesis from a line of women forced into submissive, lonely lives of battle. Now, power flows through them all, and a chorus in harmony ends the countless arias of pain voiced by all the Chosen before them.


	2. 2005-2009 Drabbles

June 7, 2009

League

A Memorable Audition

“Hi! I’m completely, totally evil, and I love unicorns, so Bad Horsey, we’ll so get along…”

The league had nearly pushed eject when the girl’s next move stopped them.

“Oh, and I have these!” she said, opening her blouse and flashing the camera. “Pick me! I try really, really hard!”

Dead Bowie looked at Evil Thomas Jefferson. Evil Thomas Jefferson looked at the Bad Horse Chorus. The chorus looked at Dr. Evil. Dr. Evil looked at Bad Horse.

“Please?” they sang desperately.

Bad Horse snorted but tapped his hoof twice. After all, someone named Harmony should have a good voice.

 

March 15, 2009

Pat

Remember When

Sometimes Dana remembers things from when she was small: a rug patterned with smiling trains from her bedroom, a tree outside her window where birds sang, her mother reading her a book about a rabbit.

When she arrives, Giles listens to her ramblings and tries to understand.

One night, Buffy hears Giles quietly reading “Pat the Bunny” to the girl. The others might find it silly, the way his voice gently prompts Dana to reach a tentative finger through her bars and stroke the soft felt, but as Buffy sees something other than pain in Dana’s eyes, her heart breaks.

It's Time for Androgyny..

_A lot of people say  
“What’s that?”  
It’s Pat._

“Who cares?” Drusilla said.

Spike looked at her, rubbing a full tum after a dinner of late night Chinese food (delivery was so convienent). She was watching that sketch on Saturday Night Live about the genderless person.

“Stupid, really. If they can’t tell, why not just see whether she goes in the gents or the ladies?”

“She?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He, they, whatever,” Spike said, continuing to floss.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dru said. “I like Pat’s glasses, though. Pretty hair, too.”

Spike sighed. No question; Dru was a bit odd.

 

February 1, 2009

Foot, Ball, or Football

Vampire Etiquette

“Boy, you need to learn more decorum,” Angelus said wearily.

“I followed your sodding list!” Spike said. “Dark alley? Check. Make sure she doesn’t scream? Check. Bite on the left side? Check! Except that she started shrieking for no good reason, it went perfectly!”

“That would be the problem,” Angelus said.

“Fine, what’d I do wrong?” Spike said with a grunt.

“You broke rule 37: never stand on the victim’s foot,” Angelus said. “That’s poor table manners, William.”

Spike stalked away, mumbling about a few places he’d like to put his foot in Angelus’s anatomy, many of them physically impossible.

Cultural Differences

“That’s not football,” Spike said as Xander turned on the television.

“I know the picture’s fuzzy, what with the cable being stolen from my parents, who are in turn stealing it from the Rogensterbers next door, but I’m absolutely sure that’s football,” Xander said, peering at the tiny screen. “Mostly.”

“No, you nitwit, I mean that’s not football!” Spike yelled. “Football has no padding, helmets, or oblong balls that look like misshapen loaves of bread. Name me one thing this sport has British football doesn’t!”

“The Dallas Cowgirls,” Xander said.

Spike paused, considering.

“Okay,” he admitted. “You’ve got a point.”

Penalty on the Play

“You lost the bet, so pay up,” Lorne said with a wide grin.

“Couldn’t you stake me instead?” Spike suggested half-heartedly.

“Now, not so glum, my chum,” Lorne said. “Who would have guessed the Red Sox would win… well, other than yours truly.”

“Fine, but I’m making sure Tina Turner never returns another one of your phone calls,” Spike said. “Now what’s the stupid step again?”

“Kick-ball-change, step, kick-ball-change, step, step,” Lorne said, watching him rehearse the dance number that was to reopen Karitas.

Spike growled and went on with the show, though he drew the line at pink Spandex.

 

November 23, 2008

Travel

Wanderlust

Angel hated staying in one place. His father had planned out his life: school, marriage, taking over the family business, never roaming ten miles from his door, birth to grave.

After he became a vampire, he found ravaging fresh landscapes both alluring and necessary. When his soul returned, he kept moving. L.A. was the longest he’d stayed in one spot for over a century, but after Wolfram & Hart, he stood with Spike on the hills overlooking the city.

“You’re leaving,” Spike said.

“Yes.”

“You’ll never outrun it, you know,” he warned.

“Maybe not,” Angel agreed, “but I can try.”

 

September 7, 2008

Reunion

Egg Salad Optional

“Why do we have to attend this daft thing every fifty years?” Angelus complained.

“The Master wants his descendents to show their allegiance,” Darla repeated for the thousandth time.

“Aye, but the last time we went William and Dru weren’t even made. Must we bring them?” Angelus asked.

“All his descendents,” Darla said, stressing the first word.

“Great-grandfather will be cross if we don’t go to his party,” Drusilla said.

With a sigh, Angelus gave up. Even vampires, he thought, had to suffer through family reunions. At least there wouldn’t be stupid potato sack races.

Well, not again, he hoped.

 

August 11, 2008

Bug

Bloodsuckers

“What? It’s a valid question!” William yelled indignantly.

“We really should have killed him,” Angelus said in disgust. “One imbecile per family is enough.”

“Don’t call yourself an imbecile,” William said. “I’ll gladly do it for you.”

“Behave, boys. Bad enough we’re hiding in a swamp without squabbling,” Darla said, then looking perplexed she added, “You know, I really hadn’t thought of that before.”

“Bzzz, bzzz,” Dru said, laughing. “Bzzz forevermore.”

Angelus groaned and plodded on.

A century later as Angel passed through the Everglades again, he was disturbed to notice some of the mosquitos had itty bitty facial ridges.

 

July 27, 2008

Slow

Giddyap, Already!

Humans, Spike thought, shouldn’t be allowed to drive. As the DeSoto sped out of Sunnydale, he encountered thousands of imbeciles. One man in particular was on his cellphone, shaving, and reading the newspaper simultaneously; he was apparently driving with his knees. But Spike knew every mortal should have their license pulled when a little old lady in an ancient, beige Monte Carlo pulled up to his car.

“If you aren’t doing at least 100, get in the slow lane!” she yelled at him through her window, then laid rubber.

Spike missed horses. At least they had more brains than humans.

 

July 19, 2008

Miss

 

Surprise

“Promise you won’t get mad,” Dawn said as Buffy glowered up at her.

“The last time you said that, you’d glued the cat to the ceiling.”

“I was six! Will you ever let that go?” Dawn said.

“Quit changing the subject. What did you do?” Buffy asked, dreading the answer.

“Maybe I’d better just show you,” Dawn said, handing her a magazine wrapped in brown paper.

“You’re reading porn?” Buffy asked, raising an eyebrow, then frowned in confusion. “ _Playboy_? Dawn, are you a lesbian?”

“Uh… no,” Dawn said.

Suddenly, Buffy screamed so loudly the Council’s windows shattered.

“YOU’RE MISS JULY?!”

 

…And I Want World Peace

“I have an idea,” Drusilla said dreamily.

Whatever she was about to say would either make Spike completely ecstatic or cause immense pain. If he was lucky, both.

“Oh?”

“I want to be Miss America,” she said.

“Dru, you’re English. The rules say Miss America has to be American,” he explained gently.

“Princesses needn’t follow the rules,” Drusilla sniffed. “Daddy said. Unless they were Daddy’s rules.”

“Well, crown or no, you’re my princess,” he said, nuzzling her.

“Shall I show you my talent?” she asked wickedly.

Spike’s original assessment was right: ecstasy and pain. He’d have given her a 10.

 

Sexual Identity Crisis

“No.”

“Will you get over yourself? It’s not that big a deal, Angel!” Cordelia said, fuming.

“No.”

“It’s okay. I can switch,” Fred offered quickly. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“You said blue is your favorite color,” Cordy said, “so you’re keeping it.”

“Don’t even look at me,” Gunn said. “Mustard’s lucky.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Wesley sighed. “When Cordelia instituted Game Night to help Fred adjust back into normal social perameters, I had thought things would be less melodramatic. Here. Angel can be Professor Plum, and I will make the great personal sacrifice of being Miss Scarlett.”

 

May 25, 2008

Slate

The Ultimate Challenge

Guy with fire spurting from his arms? Dead. Swarm of enormous insects? Dead. But Spike knew trials always came in threes.

“What’s next?” he asked. “Wrestling a barracuda underwater? Staying in the sun until I fry?”

“You must answer a question,” the demon said. “If you answer incorrectly, you perish. If you succeed, you have proven yourself.”

Spike leveled a steely gaze at him.

“Ask away.”

“What was the name of Fred Flintstone’s boss?”

Spike stared at him, then said, “Mr. Slate?”

“That’s been bothering me for months! Very well,” the demon said, sounding relieved. “We will return your soul.”

 

March 30, 2008

Dark

 

Prelude to _Passions_

“Wake up! It’s starting!” Drusilla squealed, shaking Spike.

“It’s the middle of the day,” he moaned. “I’m not getting up to watch some stupid soap opera!”

“Dark Shadows is not stupid!” Drusilla said. “Turn on the telly or no treats for a month!”

Grumbling, Spike hauled himself out of bed and flicked on the television as the eerie theme music started. He joined Dru on the couch, resigned to torture. Then Victoria Winters walked on screen, and he started paying attention.

Decades later, his choice of pseudo-Gothic soap operas may have changed, but it was still his guilty little secret.

 

Heart of Pastelness

“So, this guy is in the jungle and goes, like, completely bonkers,” Dawn began, knowing Spike wasn’t paying attention.

“Uh-huh,” Spike said as they walked down Revello Drive, keeping a wary and hopeful eye out for trouble.

Dawn gave him an impatient look.

“Then he paints his shack pink and hangs kitten posters,” she finished.

“Hang on, bit,” he said, stalking towards the neighbor’s shrubs. A muffled cry and an explosion of dust quickly followed.

“Are you listening to me?” she called.

“You said Kurtz redecorated in pink and kitties,” he answered. “I think you need to reread the book.”

 

Sure Cure

Kennedy was gone. After the group moved to England, she became restless, tired of the constant repetition and duty of being a slayer. When a Victoria Beckham lookalike started flirting with her, she’d simply run off.

Willow was devastated, and some of the new slayers were nervous how she might handle the loss of another girlfriend. Buffy, however, had the solution.

“So, milk or dark chocolate Godiva ice cream?” she said. “What’s your pick?”

Willow smiled at the girl on the other side of the door, invited her in, and they spent the rest of the night watching Steel Magnolias.

 

Shut Up, Little Padawan

“Willow,” Andrew asked nervously, “can I ask you something?”

Willow looked up from the tomes she was researching for Giles and took a deep breath, hoping whatever question was coming wouldn’t be as annoying as it probably would be.

“Okay,” she said. “Shoot.”

Andrew looked almost scared, then finally blurted out, “Is the Dark Side of the Force really stronger than the Good Side? Cause I think Yoda looked sorta suspicious in that scene, like maybe he wasn’t really telling Luke the truth, and I figured if anyone would know…”

Willow stared at him, then sighed. “Veiny-er, yes. Stronger, no.”

 

March 16, 2008

Palm

 

Just Desserts

“Rupert,” Spike wheedled, “don’t you lot support fairness and sharing and kindness to little old ladies and the like?”

“While you’re old enough to qualify as a senior citizen twice over,” Giles said, “you are hardly a lady.”

“Fine,” Spike snorted. “Keep the bloody Cadbury. Clog your arteries. See if I care.”

He stalked off, slamming the front door.

“Was the chocolate on the counter?” Willow asked.

“Yes. Wait… was?” he said. “He palmed it?”

Willow nodded.

“Wonderful,” he said. “I ate the real one. That one’s filling is most unusual.”

A sudden yelp echoed outside.

“Garlic,” he explained, grinning.

 

Not Too Happy

Angel didn’t get out much in 1960. He’d perfected the art of being a loner and generally a guy parents told their children not to speak to. He preferred it that way.

He did have one pastime, though: golf. Of course he couldn’t play it, but he watching it on TV was almost like being there. He considered it a harmless hobby. He was wrong.

The U.S. Open happened, and Arnold Palmer won. He remembered whooping in exultation, followed by a feeling like intense heartburn that smacked of danger.

Angel sighed and turned off the TV. No more golf. Check.

 

February 24, 2008

Leap

 

Schoolyard Games

Every new Slayer remembered where she was on The Day. Some wept, some laughed, some filled with purpose, but some had stories a little more bizarre.

Betty Lou had been playing leapfrog with the other girls in her third grade class, a game she hated. She was the shortest kid, and she was stuck trying to jump over Beulah, who towered over everyone else at well over five feet tall.

Then suddenly, as she was preparing to leap, the rush went over Betty Lou.

It took the custodian three hours to get her down from the top of the flagpole.

 

January 27, 2008

Cut

Don't Believe Everything You Read

Joyce knew she had to get Buffy out of the city and into a nice, quiet suburb where her future would not involve burning down gymnasiums.

When Joyce brought in the newspaper, she noticed a cutting paperclipped to the front page.

“Come to beautiful, friendly Sunnydale! Reasonable house prices! A school system with old-fashioned values! A police force looking out for your safety! Call us today for a free brochure!”

“I’ll have to look into this,” she thought.

From across the street, Giles smiled. Now all he had to do was wait for the Slayer to come to her destiny.

 

When in Rome...

Dawn walked nervously into the Italian salon.

“Nice day,” the stylist said in thickly accented English.

“Can you do this?” she asked, handing him the picture.

He looked at her critically, then nodded. Minutes later Dawn felt scissors snipping much closer to her head than ever been before. When he was done, she breathed deeply, ready to see the same haircut that changed Audrey Hepburn’s fate, and opened her eyes.

“Uh…” she said.

“What you wanted, _si_?” he said.

“Uh… _si_ ,” she admitted, staring in shock at the result.

Dawn wore a hat for the next five months. Stupid movie.

 

January 20, 2008

Square

 

Eye of the Beholder

“Are you sure it’s not sideways?” Buffy asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Willow sighed heavily. Willow loved her best friend dearly, but she was starting to think taking her to the touring art exhibit was a big mistake.

“How can you tell? It’s just a bunch of squares,” Buffy said.

“It’s a lot more than that!” Willow said, shocked. “That’s a genuine, real Mondrian! It’s a commentary on society and modern life!”

“Huh,” she said, shrugging. “Still looks sideways to me. Where’s the gift shop again? They had the cutest little knock-off dress with this pattern on it.”

 

Strategy

Angelus enjoyed chess. The game had infinite possibilities for luring the opposition into a sense of security only to close the jaws of a trap around them, checkmate, game over. In those first few days, he was delighted to find Drusilla’s new darling William was a very able player. His rook was especially deadly, and while he played with an abandon that mirrored his kills, his thoughts were clear, concise, well-planned. He was a challenge.

The game was, of course, only a prelude to metaphor. Angelus knew the easiest way to defeat William was to capture his queen. Checkmate. Delicious.

 

Fortunate Son

“You don’t got nothin’ to complain about, kid,” he said through a fume of alcohol-tinged breath. “You’ve got the nerve to bother me about your stupid shoes?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Xander said backing away slowly.

“If you’ve got holes in ‘em, that’s your fault. We spend too much money on you as it is: three lousy square meals a day. By the time I was sixteen, I was running a forklift at the docks, not going to some sissified school.”

“Right, okay,” Xander said, “I completely apologize. They’ll totally be fine until summer.”

Superglue would have to do.

 

December 16, 2007

Charity

Lesser of Two Evils

“I’m sorry, but it’s a lousy name,” he said, staring in horror at where his wife’s finger was pointing in the baby name book.

“What’s wrong with Charity?” she asked icily. “It’ll contribute to the baby’s consciousness raising.”

“The kids will tease her,” he said. “You might as well name her Poverty or Handout.”

She made a face, then flipped to the next dog-eared page in the book.

“Harmony?” he asked.

“It’s Charity, Harmony, or Karma,” she said, and her hormones made her voice sound just shy of murderous.

Harmony never knew how close she’d come to being Karma Kendall.

 

September 23, 2007

Leaves/Leaf/Left

 

Eternal Youth

No one noticed at first. Dawn had always been the baby, so maybe it wasn’t unusual that she didn’t become an adult in the group’s eyes, at least for a while.

But once she stopped growing, she stopped changing. At thirty, she could pass for eighteen, and while the new Slayers were envious, when she turned forty and still looked the same, Buffy knew there was a problem.

Fifty came. Seventy. Ninety. Generations came and went, but not her. Perhaps Angel or Spike might have helped her adjust if they had survived. They all went on, but she was left.

 

It'll Give You Furry Feet...

“It wasn’t!” Andrew yelled, stamping his foot.

“It was,” Spike said, looking the picture of reason except for the glee dancing in his eyes.

“That’s…,” Andrew blustered, searching for a bad enough word, “sacrilege!”

“Okay,” Xander said, entering the living room. “What’s going on?”

“Spike says Longbottom Leaf is marijuana!” Andrew said, nearly in tears.

Xander glared at Spike like he’d just told a five-year-old Santa wasn’t real.

“It’s not,” Xander said firmly, and Andrew exited, sniffling but vindicated.

“So is,” Spike muttered.

“Obviously,” he admitted, then left to wrest a frozen pizza from the ever-increasing village of adolescent girls.

 

Breaking Away

When she was a kid, Gwen loved watching the autumn leaves. She’d sit by the window and try to count them as the wind shook the branches of the oak tree outside. Each one pirouetted through the air, graceful and light as air.

One day, Gwen was playing with another little girl, and she forgot about her problem, and it happened. The other girl looked like one of the leaves as its stem broke loose from its branch, hovering for a split moment before it fell, but this time with a heavy, wrong sound.

Gwen didn’t watch the leaves anymore

 

September 16, 2007

Upset

The Gap

“Honey, you seem upset lately,” Joyce said, looking up from the laundry she was folding. “What’s wrong?”

A thousand replies rose to her mouth, each one more forbidden say than the next:

“I have a life you know nothing about”

“I’ll probably be dead before I turn twenty.”

“I turned the man I love into a monster.”

“I hate getting up in the morning, I hate eating, I hate climbing out my window at night, I hate slaying, I hate myself…”

Instead, Buffy smiled in a way that never touched her eyes and only said, “Just the usual. No big.”

 

September 9, 2007

Hate

Juxtaposition

To Spike, hate and love were so closely entwined they breathed one another’s air.

It happened with violence, changing from his human loathing of it to his embrace of it when dead.

It happened with Angelus, tormenting him with Drusilla until Spike realized he wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Most perversely, it happened with the Slayer, who saw him as filth. He wanted to poison her with himself, drink the purity of her brightness and fill himself with it to his fingertips.

The only hatred he had that was unmixed with love was his hatred of himself.

 

The Finer Points

“It’s not about hate,” the Master explained to Darla as he caressed the cheek of the terrified human hanging from chains in his Court’s main hall. “Hatred is a petty, human thing. We are beyond that.”

Darla looked at the young man, her demonic face showing no sign of emotion except.

“Then we should take no pleasure in the kill?” she asked.

“Childe,” he said, smiling fondly at her, “I didn’t say that. Charles! Bring out the pincers!”

He turned an inhuman gaze on the man.

“You see,” he said calmly, “hatred just gets in the way of the fun.”

 

Home Sick

It didn’t begin as hate. At first it was fear and sadness eating at her insides until finally it fermented into hate deep inside her belly. It never boiled to the surface, but it came close.

When Xander cracked one too many stupid jokes.

When Anya was carelessly cruel.

When Giles left.

When Dawn cried.

When Willow’s expression was concern laced with pride, like she expected thanks for bringing her back.

It stabbed her gut like the stake that had been there months ago.

But the rage slept at the sound of Spike’s voice, and for that, she hated herself.

 

August 5, 2007

Drive

 

The Gentleman’s Sport

“Five!” bellowed Xander, waving his arms wildly.

“Five?” asked Giles.

“This is the fifth hole, right? Last time, you made me yell four,” Xander said, searching angrily through his bag for another ball.

Giles considered telling him he should call “fore” each time he hit a wild drive, but as he realized the ball had landed three fairways over, with previous attempts ending in a thirty minute search through the rough and a concussed squirrel, he gave up.

“Let’s go back to the clubhouse,” he said. “We still have time to make it to Petey’s Putt-Putt per your original suggestion.”

 

Permanent Hiatus

“I’m telling you, it’s a conspiracy!” Spike said from his perch on the couch, a bag of Doritos laying abandoned on the floor after he had tossed it away in disgust. “There’s no way they should have taken that show off!”

“Which one got cancelled this time?” Angel asked, putting down his newspaper as a lost cause.

“Bloody network cancelled the one about the secret cross-country race, just like they did that one about the space cowboys,” Spike said, pointing an accusing finger at the TV. “It’s revolting.”

“Happens to the best of them,” Angel said with a knowing sigh.

 

July 1, 2007

Dominion

Though Lovers Be Lost

_Though lovers be lost, love shall not;  
And death shall have no dominion.  
-Dylan Thomas_

Dawn came up too quickly in L.A. Buffy would have preferred staying in bed, looking at the cracks on the ceiling and feeling her old life, her old self, ebbing away like low tide. But the diner was open early, and she often walked to work in the surreal morning twilight. Then, without warning, dawn would show up, the sun vomiting light over the street.

In darkness it was easier imagine he had never existed, she had never killed him, she didn’t still love him even when he wanted to destroy her. Even in death, he still held her heart.

 

The Order of Things

We learned them all in school: angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. Sister read the names of the celestial order aloud in class, and each one sounded like a precious, sparkling gem on her lips.

“Remember, girls,” she said to us, “that all heavenly beings are male. In the fall of Eve, women became so tainted that no angel would ever wish to soil itself with our form.”

I wept to think there was no angel who would want me, save perhaps a fallen one. When my Angel appeared, I knew how right dear Sister was.

 

May 19, 2007

Royalty

The Virtues of Humanity

Illyria was god-king of the primordium, as far beyond human comprehension as the light of a star was beyond a child’s grasp. Of course, things do change sometimes.

“What is the name of this thing?” she said, holding the object as though it were a bug.

“It’s a chocolate bar,” Wesley said, glancing up from his work.

“I slayed the metal beast in the corridor, and it spewed forth dozens of these,” Illyria said, sniffing it.

“That would have been a vending machine,” Wesley dead-panned.

Carefully, she took a miniscule taste.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I judged your race’s ineptitude hastily.”

 

April 29, 2007

Project

 

Wrong Address

Weeks passed after the ritual with the Orb of Thessula, but no trace of Angel or Buffy appeared. Finally, Willow stole one of Giles’s books on astral projection.

Carefully, Willow concentrated on the sword thrust through Acathla, determined to find the soul of the last person who touched it. At first, nothing happened, but then…

Fire. Faces distorted in demonic glee. Pain beyond imagining. Scent of burnt flesh. Darkness. Fear. Despair soaking through her.

Willow woke screaming. Three years later, the vision still haunting her, she broke the laws of nature and sanity to bring Buffy back   
from the grave.

Plan B

“They’re unhappy, Lindsey,” Holland said, smiling paternally. “The Senior Partners gave you this project as a test. You don’t want to let them down.”

“I don’t plan to,” Lindsey assured him with a grin that had gotten many cheerleaders into his backseat in high school. “I have a secret weapon.”

“Really?” asked Manners.

“If Angel won’t turn Darla, I’ll bring in the reserves,” he said, opening the office door. Drusilla stood behind it, patting scarlet droplets from the corners of her mouth.

“Your secretary was very sweet,” she said, gazing unsettling at Holland.

“My boy,” he laughed, “you’ll go far.”

 

Stage Fright

“My, um, my report is on Ab-abraham Li-incoln,” the girl whispered.

“Tara,” Mrs. Ballard said sharply, “I haven’t heard a word you’ve said. Project your voice.”

“S-s-sorry,” she said, blushing. Her heart was racing, and her sweaty hands were making her paper damp. “Abraham Lincoln was b-b-born in eighteen-oh-n-nine…”

A spitball hit her forehead to gails of laughter. Tara bit her lip, fighting against tears.

“I suppose that’s all we can expect from you,” Mrs. Ballard said. “You may sit down.”

The next day, the whole class came down with nasty colds, but strangely, Tara never so much as sniffled.

 

March 11, 2007

Title Swap

 

The Puppet Show

Giles hated the Watchers Council from the first day he saw them training potential Slayers. They were drilling them in fighting movements over and over until the exercises became mindless, and he knew mindlessness was what they were meant to achieve. A person without a personality was easier to control, and it was also easier for a Watcher to send her to face near certain annihilation. He saw the motions of each girl were synchronized so completely that they appeared to be mechanical, following the signals from the other Watchers.

Silently, he promised himself he would never be a puppeteer.

 

Nightmares

Buffy was twelve when the first nightmare had made her wake screaming. At the time, Joyce blamed it on her watching too many scary movies with her friends. She had calmly told her vampires were just a myth.

Buffy was fifteen when Joyce had her committed for thinking she was some terrible thing called a Slayer. A few weeks later she had been released, and they’d moved to Sunnydale to start over.

Buffy was seventeen when Joyce saw her stab someone through the heart with a wooden stake and watched as he dissolved into dust. Joyce’s nightmare was only beginning.

 

Prophecy Girl

Drusilla told her mother it was just a game. When her sisters and she walked in the park, they would guess which of their neighbors they would see first, what day the tulips would open, what color the carriage parked next to the curb would be. Drusilla was always right. When her sisters realized this, the questions became more serious. Does Jimmy love me? How many children will I have? When will I die?

Her mother struck her across the face for pretending to know more than anyone should know, but she was already sobbing because she knew the answers.

 

Halloween

Dracula was the most annoying being Spike had ever encountered. Not only did the vampire spill their secrets to some author, but he had the worst fake accent ever. As for the wager they’d had about whether or not the ponce could seduce Dru, he was certain he hadn’t (her bloomers weren’t really “proof”). Still, every year, he got revenge.

“Trick or treat!” yelled another tyke.

He opened the door to reveal a toddler dressed not even as Dracula but as Count bloody Chocula.

“Kid, you get the whole damn bag of Snickers,” he giggled, dumping it into his pillowcase.

 

Lie to Me

Cordelia was the belle of every Sunnydale ball. She was the prettiest, richest, most popular girl in school, and everybody understood she would be Queen C for the rest of her life.

Apparently, the people of Los Angeles hadn’t been told this. She was living in a dive. Nobody knew her, and as unbelievable as it seemed, they didn’t want to. There were even girls who might possibly, if someone squinted hard, be prettier than she was.

Cordy stared into the bathroom mirror, willing herself back onto her throne.

“Okay,” she said to her reflection, “I’m gonna be a star.”

 

Ted

William was often sick as a child. Even when he could go outside, he couldn’t run about with the other boys, so he had no friends. To keep him company, his mother brought him a stuffed bear. His eyes lit up, and he immediately named it Ted.

Ted lived in William’s wardrobe many years. When William brought Drusilla to his mother, she climbed the stairs to his bedroom and pulled the bear out.

“You will be Miss Edith’s friend,” she said.

William never said anything about her discovery, but he smiled when he saw the bear and doll having tea.

 

A Simple Misunderstanding

Xander was adjusting to Willow being a witch. It was neat she could float a pencil, although he couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to make fire shoot out of ice. However, going shopping with her had suddenly become icky.

“But I ordered fifteen newt tails,” Willow said, frowning at the man behind the counter.

“You said eye of newt,” he said firmly.

“The spell says tails,” she said.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I only have eyes for you.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “There can’t be much difference.”

Xander swore to himself he was not going to carry that bag.

 

Anne

Anne was her fourth name. Her first one wasn’t worth remembering. Chanterelle had sounded pretty, but it wound up being embarassing. Lily happened after she saw an Easter bouquet. She wanted a clean slate, and they looked fresh, pure. But after that place, she needed something more than a blank canvas. Buffy had been strong, and maybe some of that would come with her name. She needed that. She needed to be Anne.

When she walked into the diner, no one bothered noticing she was new. It was a little step towards a new life, but she would keep walking.

 

Homecoming

Buffy stood on the porch a long while before knocking. She hadn’t been home for months. She’d wanted to forget this place existed. No matter how hard she tried to run away from the destiny that was forced on her, it followed.

Then there was the matter of her mother kicking her out for having that destiny. She wouldn’t ever understand Buffy hadn’t chosen her calling and didn’t even want it. Buffy wasn’t sure if she was about to get a hug or a slammed door.

Yet another battle. Great. Just what she needed. She took a breath and knocked.

 

Enemies

Cordelia had very few friends. Harmony, Aura, and the rest of the Cordettes weren’t really friends. They were followers, but she didn’t trust them. Buffy, Willow, and Giles were trustworthy enough, but the truth was she didn’t like them. Then there was Xander. No matter how often she told herself he wasn’t hot, they wound up in a closet. She’d never admit it, but he was fun. Still, totally not a friend. At least there was one friend she could count on.

“Wrap the diamond pendant,” she said to jeweler.

It was true. They really were a girl’s best friend.

 

Hush

With several dozen girls packed into one Cape Cod, it was bound to get overwhelming sometimes. Most of them didn’t speak English, and they were all frightened, hungry, and homesick. Giles never seemed to consider how she was going to feed them on a fast food paycheck. Then Faith showed up and, after everyone conviently forgot she had tried to kill them all, ripped into her for not knowing everyone’s name.

At night, Buffy cried, wishing for her mother, a future, a life somewhere other than the mouth of hell, but she always muffled it. The girls needed their rest.

 

Restless

Darla loathed humanity on principle, but she loved the noise they created. Vampires were, after all, dead, and the Master’s court felt particularly lifeless. But humans knew they wouldn’t live forever, so they surrounded themselves with colors, light, music, beautiful clothes, fine food, whatever they could afford. She loved to drink it all down, the whirl of their dancing making her cheeks pink. Paris, Venice, Madrid, she sped from one place to another, never quite finding what she was seeking because she never knew what it was. All she knew was she wanted to be the center of the dance.

 

Family

There was a little girl who lived with her mummy, daddy, and sisters. They were very happy until their throats were ripped out. Only one was left.

There was a little girl who had a daddy, a grandmummy, and a knight. They were very happy until the daddy stopped loving them and the grandmummy left and the knight loved another lady. Only one was left.

There was a little girl whose grandmummy, daddy, and knight all died. Only one was left.

Then she found a boy with daddy’s growl and grandmummy’s eyes. She kissed him. They lived happily ever after.

 

Through the Looking Glass

Now that the vampire version of herself had gone back to whatever reality she belonged in, Willow, being a very thorough person, decided to list things she had learned.

1\. Do not get bitten.  
2\. Leather is naughty, but Angel looked at me _that_ way when I had on the outfit. Naughty = good?  
3\. I’m as master-like as an Easter bunny, and who finds those frightening?  
4\. I seem to be oddly attracted to myself.

“This is disturbing,” Willow said, then crumpled the list, and threw it away. After all, it’s not like she would ever really be bad.

 

Shells

Buffy and Dawn went to San Diego with their father for a week, but things didn’t go as planned. He left them alone at the beach house every day. Deeply bored, they competed over who could find more shells. Dawn won, obviously.

Five years later, she used those shells to make a frame for Buffy’s birthday. It was still sitting on her windowsill after she died. Dawn picked it up, knowing she’d never collected them. She wasn’t real, and her sister wasn’t real anymore either.

She found out shells crush when you hold them tightly, and they cut like razors.

 

February 25, 2007

Scout

 

Reverse Sexism

Willow had tried being a Girl Scout. It was her mother’s idea; Sheila claimed it would make her less susceptible to male attempts to squash her spirit. Willow thought the uniform itchy, but the campfires and cookies were fun. However, trouble was inevitable.

“They’re my best friends, Mrs. Jones!” Willow said, her face falling. “Why can’t they be Girl Scouts too?”

“Only girls can be Girl Scouts,” the leader said, staring at Jesse and Xander. The manual hadn’t covered this. “Boys have to be Boy Scouts.”

Willow stopped going to the meetings, but oh, how she missed the Thin Mints!

 

January 28, 2007

Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa

The sound of skin sizzling is making Buffy nauseous, but she can’t move, not to stop Spike’s self-mutilation, not to run away. Instead, the sick, obscene scent of burning flesh hangs in the church, and she stares in horrified fascination.

Her history professor said penitants during the Black Plague flagellated themselves to ward off the end of the world, or at least their own damnation. That lesson is now permanently embedded in her mind. Slowly, she backs away from the scene, her eyes still fixed on him.

“I’m sorry, Spike,” she whispers. “I can’t do this.”

And he is alone.

 

January 7, 2007

Fire

Time is the Fire

Angel had seen borders change so much he could barely recognize the geography of his childhood. He had seen man fly, first in aircrafts like giant dragonflies and later in steel ships destined for the moon. The diseases that had once claimed the lives of many were completely exterminated. Music bore little resemblance to what it had been, and sometimes words slipped past his lips that were so antique they confused his friends.

Darla had told him vampires never age but remain the same. It was the world around him that he had to watch burn down time and again.

 

Perdition

When she was little, the good sisters warned her about the seven deadly sins. She berated herself for little lapses into vanity or envy, weeping at night into her pillow when she had looked at a boy and thought of kisses and fallen into the pit of lust. Always she feared one day she would burn in Hell, the crackling of flames haunting her nightmares.

Now it was different.

William licked the sensitive spot behind her ear, her body rising beneath him.

“What do you want to do now, pet?” he murmured.

“I want to burn,” she growled, “burn, burn!”

 

November 12, 2006

Memorial

 

Summer's Lease Hath All to Soon a Date

After the final battle, Buffy knew they needed to remember the fallen, but how? For weeks she sat at a desk in the temporary Council headquarters, drawing up plans for memorials: eternal flames, statues, plaques. None of them felt right. Finally, the perfect idea came to her.

They bought a parcel of land in the countryside, and they set to work planting. When spring came, a blazing field of flowers bloomed, tulips and lilies, irises and hyacinths, every color of the rainbow, one for each girl who had been one in a generation. Somehow, she felt they could finally rest.

 

November 5, 2006

Blackout

 

The Time Has Come

Lorne had lived with Angel for months and restrained himself heroically. Every evening the vampire glided down the stairs of the Hyperion, and Lorne held his breath, hoping this time would be different. It never was.

Finally, he’d had enough. He kicked in the door of Angel’s bedroom, strode across the room, and, swinging open the closet doors, dumped armfuls of clothes on the floor as Angel watched in utter confusion.

“Lorne, what are you doing?”

“We are going shopping, puddin’. You are getting some color in your wardrobe if it kills you… again. But from now on, black? Out!”

 

October 15, 2006

Chill

 

Ice Blue

Illyria was perpetually cold. Wesley had noticed it the first time he tried to hit her only to be repulsed, not just by her inhuman strength but the chill of her flesh that told him undeniably that Fred was gone. Fred had been warm, and not just her skin, but her voice, her eyes, her laugh. All of them held Texan sunlight.

He wasn’t sure if Illyria slept; her eyes remained open. Possibly she chose to ignore him after they finished their nightly rutting. But as he lay beside her, staring at the ceiling, he knew her chill was contagious.

 

Christmas Morning, 1998

Angel had forgotten what snow felt like. He’d seen it last in Montana, the vacant white expanses stretching endlessly to the distant horizon. Snow was a desolate thing, reminding him of his solitude, the single figure in black marring the white landscape. But as flakes fell softly from the Southern California sky that Christmas and he reached his hands towards them in wonder, letting the chill soak into his hands until he felt truly awake, snow became the symbol of his link to humanity.

Then a kid hit him in the head with a snowball. It rather broke the mood.

 

September 24, 2006

Muppets/Puppets

Just Another Fan

Sesame Street had settled down for the night, and not one cute, preschool-aged tot was to be seen. A light still shone dimly from Bert and Ernie’s appartment, and the only sound was coming faintly from deep within Oscar’s apparently bottomless garbage bin.

“That is my kinda dame!” Oscar cheered wildly as he watched Cordelia Chase on his TV set once more snapping wittily at the Scoobies. She was the absolute Queen of the Pithy Put Down. “Yeah, baby! Work that miniskirt! I haven’t seen gams like that since before Maria had Gabby. Oooh, if only TV shows were real…”

 

September 3, 2006

Feet or Legs

 

A Pain in the . . .

April Fools was a miniature version of hell. Cordelia was sure of it. Her boss had an attitude problem so large she made Shannen Doherty look zen. Customers were worse; everybody was either in a bad mood or shoplifting, and if anything disappeared on her shift it came out of her paycheck. But the real proof she was in hell was her shoe size. Standing so much was making her feet swell, but there was no way Cordelia Chase would ever be caught dead in size 10 shoes, not even if her feet were bleeding all over the crummy carpet.

 

Ask a Silly Question

Angel and Wesley were drunk. After a long day, Angel had sought solace in some very old Scotch. When Wes asked to join him, Angel was numb enough to nod.

“You’ve been alive for a quarter millenium,” Wesley said, gazing at him blearily. “Who’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?”

Angel blinked owlishly. “Which part?”

“Pardon?”

“Which part of her? Best eyes was Audrey Hepburn; best figure, Marilyn Monroe; best lips was Buffy. But Florence Nightengale had the best legs.”

“How could you see Florence Nightengale’s legs with all those petticoats?”

Angel gave him a look.

“Oh. Of course.”

 

Sensible Shoes

Hidden in a tree, Spike admired Buffy fighting two newly risen fledges, her arms and legs flashing in the moonlight like quicksilver. The thought she might lose never crossed his mind until one vampire grabbed her stake while turning to dust and threw it 300 yards, leaving her weaponless. Panic crossed her face. Spike was half out of the tree, but he remained undiscovered as she wrenched off her high heel and buried the stiletto in the remaining vampire’s heart.

“Thank you, wooden heel fad,” she mumbled, hobbling lop-sidedly home on one broken heel.

Spike laughed quietly. What a woman.

 

August 27, 2006

Ingredient or Recipe

Dead End

Willow’s eyes were glued to three words, solid and undeniable in black ink, written in a hand that was deliberate and unmistakable: vino de madre. They weren’t simply an ingredient in a spell; they were the key to bringing Buffy back. But that wasn’t all those words meant. She knew they were a signpost on a dark path, one that a thousand books screamed had no return.

Willow shut the book with an annoyed snap. It would be over in just a few minutes, she told herself. But some part of her knew that it would never really be over.

 

August 20, 2006

Backwards or Opposite

Eladynnus

As Spike the Vampire Slayer was surrounded by the fiendish Scoobies, he knew he was doomed. Buffy the Bloody had simply proven too adept in combat.

“Told you before, sweetheart,” she purred as she pinned his arms. “You’re drawn to the darkness. Now that’s where you’ll stay.”

As she bit into his neck and then forced his lips to her throat, he felt his soul depart. Strange, he thought. Though he probably wouldn’t be accepted by her gang even without a soul, he couldn’t help thinking he was going to have much more fun than he had under Watcher Snyder.

 

The Curse

Making love to Buffy had been everything Angel had hoped, but suddenly something was wrong. He wanted to scream, but the agony was beyond it.

“What was that?” he said when it ended.

When Buffy opened her eyes in answer, something about her frightened him.

“That’s what we look like to other people?” she said, smiling slowly. “Not bad! But I don’t want to be trapped again, so…”

She grabbed a stake, and too stunned to react, Angel turned to dust. The demon in Buffy’s body blew him a kiss and strode into the night, reveling in its regained freedom.

 

August 13, 2006

Soul or Spirit

Professional Advice

He gave the big lug credit for trying, but if Lorne weren’t already green, he’d be turning it. Angel’s singing was appalling

“Sweetpea?” he said delicately, startling him from what he’d thought was a private concert. “I know vampires get gifted with youth and quick healing, but pitch? Not so much. Ang, punkin’ bun, do not attempt Aretha. Messing with the Queen of Soul is a big n-o.”

“Lorne?”

“Yes, Angel?”

“Get out of my shower.”

Lorne blushed orange and fled, suddenly realizing where he had followed Angel’s off-key notes. That was it. He was moving out of the Hyperion.

 

August 6, 2006

Mouth or Tongue

What’s in a Name

Buffy hates living on the Hellmouth. A mouth is something that speaks, screaming or pleading, tempting or cursing. A mouth is something that can devour what is put in front of it, chew it up, and spit it out. A mouth is something that can vomit forth disgusting things that should be kept inside. All of those make sense to her. But it’s when she realizes that a mouth can kiss, that hell can make her lips burn for another touch that she tells herself she won’t see Spike again tonight.

But the mouth of hell still swallows her whole.

 

July 23, 2006

Writing or Conventions

The Diary of Drusilla Woodman

 

December 24, 1855

Father has come home for the day from his work, and the holiday is lovely this year. Melinda has become engaged to Stephen. I only hope when I am eighteen I too shall meet someone as kind and loving as he is to my eldest sister. Mother is pensive, though. Perhaps the good sisters at school have told her about my insisting that Agnes and Margaret not play by the oak tree last Thursday just before the great branch broke.

But tonight is Christmas Eve. Mother is calling us in to dinner, and I am full of joy this night.

 

July 15, 1857

Melinda’s first child has been born. She has named her Anne and let me hold her today.

I didn’t mean to see, but I knew at once there was going to be a little mound in the churchyard with her name upon it, and a date three years off. It took my breath away and I became faint. I told my sister it was because I had not eaten yet today.

I may be wrong. I pray God I am, and that He lifts this curse from me.

Mother suspects. She watches me closely. I know I am a disappointment.

 

October 26, 1857

I was in the kitchen grating carrots today, and it happened again. This time mother was there. I seized up as the pictures came to me, a horrible image of a bloated face. A woman has been murdered and thrown into the Thames, and not by human hands. The bowl on my lap clattered to the floor, and mother looked up to see me doubled over and shaking.

I tried to pretend it was only the pangs of Eve’s curse, but she knew it was a lie. She slapped me for my presumption against the Lord.

I am very tired.

 

February 18, 1858

Catharine and Joan sewed in the parlor today as I played the piano. I have been happier lately, for there have been no visions. Mother smiled at me, a true smile, and complimented me on my playing.

Father is away, recalled to the coal mines in Newcastle, and I miss him dearly. I think no one is dearer to me in this world than Daddy, but then a shadow passes before my eyes, and I pray to the Virgin to let the images go away before I see them properly.

I know they will return. I am not penitent enough.

 

June 20, 1858

Joan has followed Melinda down the aisle, and I am once more a bridesmaid. Today should have been happy, but my sinfulness marred it. As I watched her dance with Jonathon, I saw again. Darkness is in his heart, and I saw my sister covered in bruises with a gash in her lip, all at his hands. The next moment the room was full of laughter, and Joan was a lovely, blushing bride led through the waltz by a seemingly devoted husband.

I became sick in the garden. I do not want to know secrets, but my frailty betrays me.

 

November 18, 1858

Father is home again, and the company should not call him to revisit the mines until after the new year. I wish I could let my mind be at ease, but no; the pictures flood my mind if I allow myself any leisure at all. If I remain busy, I might escape my sin. Idleness is my enemy. Thus I now scrub and mend, wash and bake, scour and pray at all hours, but the nights, oh, what can I do with the nights! Sleep must come upon me, and my mind betrays me! Something terrible approaches, like distant thunder.

 

March 23, 1859

Lent draws to a close, yet I am still filthy of heart. It doesn’t matter what humiliations of the flesh I visit upon myself. Kneeling on gravel, dried peas in my shoes, leather cords that bite into my flesh beneath my clothes, none have been of any avail, for the images grow stronger.

Joan is unwell, and though the family pretends it is illness, I know her illness carries the name Jonathon, and she should heal if he let her alone. He will not. She will die soon.

I fear that she will be the fortunate one among us all.

 

November 11, 1859

I went to the good father today, desperate for the absolution of the holy Church. I wished for words of comfort, but found none. The priest is the mouth of God, and within the confessional, he holds the power to forgive sins or hold them bound. I sought salvation, but he saw the truth. I am damned. The worst of all fates is mine. I am to be burned, and nothing will save me now. It doesn’t matter how busy I am now or how fervently I pray. I have been cast aside. My death will lead me into hell.

 

January 5, 1860

They passed near me tonight. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I saw the glint of eyes in the darkness, eyes of demons, yellow as devil flame. Darkness is battering against the door, pounding for entrance, yet I know it will not come in unless it is bidden. Joan’s ghost flits from room to room now, screaming, yet only I can hear her. A thousand murdered faces press against the windowpanes. I have grown pale, Mother says. She is frightened of me.

She should be. I have seen the face of Death, and it is mine.

 

March 22, 1860

Catharine is dead. She was found in her bed, her throat slit and crimson staining her skin like a rose. I know he was here. They don’t believe me anymore. I believe they think I might be the one who is doing this. The animals are all dead. The windows are painted with bloody fingerprints, spelling out things I don’t understand but that make others gasp.

Melinda will be next. I tried to tell her, but she slapped me and said not to threaten her. I wasn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if I will weep blood if I cry long enough.

 

April 15, 1860

I will join the good sisters. Nothing is left for me except perhaps the hope something better lies beyond, that I shall hear “te absolvo.”

They blamed me. They were right. I didn’t hold the blade, oh no, but if I were not cursed, I wouldn’t have drawn their eyes, and then Catharine would not be rotting, nor Melinda found hanging from the attic gable. Poor Anne, poor little lamb at the slaughter.

This world swims in blood, and my soul screams like the damned, for I am, you see. Nursery rhymes are true, and Jill shall come tumbling after.

 

April 28, 1860

It’s quiet inside me. The screaming is still there, singing through me like a heartbeat, though my Daddy says it is nonsense. All the thumping is gone, and the bright spark that lit me is quenched, like a candle that’s been blown out but still smokes a bit. I shall never be alone again he says.

I know I’m still cursed. I know he’s lying. Grandmummy shakes her head at my weeping, calls me names, says I know nothing. I wish I knew nothing. Knights topple from horses, angels fall back into grace. I shall hide from the sunlight alone.

 

Conventions and Protocol of Society Observed

William gripped the etiquette book so tightly the spine creaked. Feverishly, he consulted the pertinent chapter.

“When a gentleman wishes to make the acquaintance of a lady whom he has not had the pleasure of meeting formally, he has several options. The easiest of these is attending a ball at which the lady makes an appearance. He may then appeal to the master of the ballroom to introduce them.”

William glanced at Cecily across the ballroom, then looked wildly for the master.

It was Higgins. In school, William hadn’t permitted him to copy from his term exam.

He was doomed.

 

Erased Reminders

Joyce’s handwriting had been ordinary, legible, comfortably simple. At one point it had been all over the house, Buffy supposed, on bills and grocery lists and a thousand other incidental things that make up life. Most had been gone for a long time now, removed before she returned from heaven. Once in a while she’d been confronted by it, maybe in the address book or previous years’ taxes. But now that Sunnydale was gone, nothing remained of her mother’s writing, not even the inscription on her tombstone. It was that thought that made her realize the totality of her loss.

 

July 9, 2006

Cats or Kittens

Generation Gap

“You’re out of your mind,” Spike scoffed as he tipped back another mouthful of dreadful American beer.

“I am not! Wonder Woman would so win,” Andrew pouted as he took a swig of Yoo-Hoo.

“Against Catwoman? You can’t believe the bird in knickers and a bustier would best Eartha Kitt in a skin-tight catsuit,” Spike argued, gesturing so wildly with his bottle that half of it spilled on the floor.

“Who’s Eartha Kitt? Halle Berry played Catwoman, or Michelle Pfeiffer if you’re old school,” Andrew said with certainty.

Spike sighed, pitying the newer generation for their lack of the tradition.

 

July 2, 2006

Neighbors

1632 Revello Drive

“Leonard!”

“It’s 3:00 a.m., Myrtle.”

“She’s doing it again!”

“Doing what, Myrtle?”

“She’s sneaking in her bedroom window! I bet she’s a drug dealer. Or a prostitute! A drug-dealing prostitute! It explains her wardrobe.”

“I have to go to work tomorrow, Myrtle.”

“You retired ten years ago.”

“Then I’ll get another job in the morning, Myrtle.”

“Teenagers like her are destroying this country’s morality.”

“Go to sleep, Myrtle.”

“Fine! One night that delinquent will sneak in our window and murder us, thanks to you!”

“Goodnight, Myrtle.”

“I bet she’s had sex.”

“At least someone has, Myrtle.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, Myrtle.”

 

Shaking the Dust Off Her Shoes

The girl was gone. Probably it was best, Mrs. O’Connor thought as she stood on the doorstep of her trailer, staring at the Lahanes’ place. Anyone could see her mother’s illness was the only reason the girl had stayed this long, but now that the woman was dead, she hadn’t been surprised at her daughter’s disappearance. It was as though the ground had opened up and swallowed her, pulling her straight into the hell her mother had always told her would be where she’d wind up.

Mrs. O’Connor couldn’t help thinking hell would be a nice vacation after living there.

 

Next Door

Angelus had the room to Drusilla’s right, and William the one to the left, each with a connecting door to her bedroom. It was understood that, as her sire, Angelus always had the privilege of deciding whether he would spend the entire night with her or simply screw her repeatedly into the mattress and leave, letting William take his place as sloppy seconds.

He never knew which was the worse nightmare: listening through the thin walls as the woman he loved screamed another man’s name, or the torture of knowing that man would never turn the doorknob of William’s room.

 

June 11, 2006

Dizzy

 

1, 2, 3

When Xander, Willow and Jesse were kids, their favorite game was spinning. They’d spread their arms and spin as fast as they could. The world would turn blurry, and one by one they’d fall to the ground, giggling, breathless, and dizzy. The last one to fall won.

Jesse had fallen first, barely more than a child.

Xander had fallen in Africa, prey to an ancient curse.

Willow was the last one standing. The spinning of the world around her made her breath catch and her footing stumble, but she continued the game until her time came to fall as well.

 

To the Edge

Buffy didn’t completely pass out after Angel had nearly drained her. She was still aware of the sounds around her, but she couldn’t move or respond to them. Her head was swimming with dizziness, and when Angel gasped in horror at what he had done and pulled her into his arms, carrying her through the dark streets to the hospital, she lay limp and lifeless, excused from reacting.

She still didn’t know what had made her dizzy: the blood loss, the shock that his control could break so completely, or the heady, insane wish that he would lose it again.

 

Whirling Worlds

The young lady had bitten into his throat with a mixture of ferocity and delicacy that made no sense except the kind that made his blood rush through his veins and into her. He should be screaming and fighting. It wouldn’t be difficult to free himself, but he found he didn’t want to.

Dizziness flooded him, filling him with a euphoria he had seen in drunken men and silently envied. The world swung wildly in time to the insistent sucking of her lips, and he clung to it greedily, brought to a strange reality where stars spun before his eyes.

 

May 8, 2006

Firsts

 

First Sight

He saw her for the first time at the Bronze, dancing, impossibly young, the scent of her innocence strong enough to reach him on the other side of the room. Lights flickered over her hair, and for a second he found himself entranced, remembering sunlight from a century ago. Summers, wasn’t that her name? It fit. She was summer personified in all its naïve energy, never believing winter would come.

He shook his head, clearing it, remembering his purpose and hers. They were the same, after all. He was to kill her, or she would kill him. The dance began.

 

First Step

He’d made his share of deals with the devil, but never with the other side before. It still amazed him how small she was. Her innocence was gone, obviously, but he had other concerns, namely trying to stop the world from ending while winning back his ladylove. He had a good bartering chip with the Watcher at Dru and Angelus’s tender mercies, provided they hadn’t killed him, but he wouldn’t let her know that. If he had to fight on the side of goodness and light and cute kittens once, he had as good a reason as he ever would.

 

First Kiss

He’d never known a kiss could feel like that. It was brief, chaste, barely more than a peck, and that was what had tipped him off it wasn’t the bot. If his new plaything had a fault, it was a complete lack of subtlety. But this, over before it had barely begun, words unnecessary, it was too much too fast to take in, especially with his body reeling after Glory’s thrashing. When he realized the bot was gone for good, he couldn’t help being a little relieved. After having the real thing, the comparison would just have made him sad.

 

First Miracle

Buffy was back, dressed in white, her movements delicate, like she didn’t know what to do with herself anymore. It was the first time he had seen her this vulnerable since before Angel had turned, and it went to his heart with a pain that must be what a stake would feel like someday. Her heart was beating, and when he took her hands, they were warm, so she wasn’t a demon. Part of him was repeating prayers of gratitude he had forgotten long ago, but another part was horrified. She had returned, but he wasn’t sure Buffy had survived.

 

First Mating

The last thing he was going to do was question why she had chosen now to give in to what he’d been dreaming of for over a year. It wasn’t how he’d pictured it, not that he’d been thinking of wine and roses, but the sheer violence she unleashed was a shock. In the back of his mind he knew this wasn’t about him, that he was a convienent body she could safely rip apart without her conscience getting in the way, that she’d hate herself and him when she returned to sanity. But just now, he really didn’t care.

 

First End

It was really over this time, he thought. He’d died once before, so that part wasn’t new, but this time he was sure he’d stay that way. Buffy had left. He’d listened for the sounds of her footfalls dying away in the distance; she’d gotten out alive. Now there was too much light, brighter than anything he’d seen in ages, shooting from him, engulfing the Turok-Hans by the score. He realized he was seeing sunlight for the first time since he was a mortal, and something about it struck him as so ridiculously ironic that he died with a laugh.

 

Hitting Home

She hadn’t even considered that it would work this time. Thus far she’d staked vampires through the pancreas, the lung, and the liver, or so Merrick told her. But this time the point had hit the heart.

The vampire had known what happened, and there was an infinite, suspended moment between them, his eyes widening in shock that was almost panic before they became grainy, dissolving into nothing, and Buffy found herself sprawled on top of a pile of dust that a moment before had looked human.

She tried to feel shame for her burst of savage triumph. She failed.

 

April 30, 2006

Return of Old Acquaintances

Fall Again

She appeared from the shadows like the return of damnation: sweet and soft, scented of roses and the bitter, metallic tang that hung phantom-like in the air wherever their kind went. She smelled of home, and no place had been home to him for a very long time. For a moment he wondered if he had gone mad, but she spoke to him, touched him, knew about the Initiative but didn’t care. She held before him the choice to return to the darkness with her, an apple from Eden polished to blood-red.

And he bit into it with fierce joy.

 

January 29, 2006

Once upon a Time

 

Just a Simple Question

“Once upon a time, long before the human filth dwelt upon the fertile land, we were the rulers of this world,” the Master said longingly as took his newest charge’s chin in his hand. “The lights of the sky held no fear for us, and we lived in perfect joy and happiness. One day it shall be that way again, my childe.”

“But Great-Granddaddy, what did we eat if there were no humans?” Drusilla asked, eyes innocently wide.

The Master faltered. “We… we ate… you’re missing the point.”

“You sound like Sister when I asked who Abel married,” she giggled.

 

Moral Reversed

“Once upon a time, there were three hellgods, and they hated each other’s guts,” Glory explained to Dawn as the ceremony approached. “It’s not really important you know this, but I’m bored and, hey, you’re here.”

“So you’re one of the three?” Dawn asked.

“Right, kiddo. The other two punted my divine derriere into this craphole dimension all because I was a teensy bit creative in my punishments. And you know what the moral of the story is?”

“What?”

Glory glanced at the clock. The time was rapidly approaching, and still no Slayer.

“Never trust your siblings to save you.”

 

January 22, 2006

Rain

 

Rewakening

“Rain is angels weeping for fallen souls,” his mother had told him. “Thunder is the sound of the eternal gates closing behind them, and lightning is the flash of the everlasting fires.”

Personally, he’d always thought his mother was full of it, right up until he killed her.

As he lay in the alleyway behind the basement apartment where he lived, gasping in pain and drenched in rain that made his clothes adhere to his skin, he couldn’t help laughing silently. Thunder crashed and lightning streaked across the sky, and he had to give her credit. Ma had been right.

 

Regret

She hadn’t yet stopped sobbing, and the teartracks on her face were indistinguishable from the rainwater sluicing over both of them. He could smell Wesley’s blood on her. Stronger than that, he could smell desperation and fear. He knew that smell intimately, the desire to just give up and give in, let the darkness swallow you whole so you didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Slowly, Faith calmed in his arms. The rain abated until only a soft shower pattered over them both, two souls desperate for a benediction in the wake of the unthinkable things they had done.

 

Rebirth

His son was born. In the darkness and the cold water of his birth, still covered in a light coating of his mother’s dust, the only kiss she would ever give him, he opened his mouth and wailed at the inhospitable world around him.

Angel knew exactly how he felt.

Holtz’s eyes were burning hungrily in the darkness, and he couldn’t blame him. Here Angel stood, the monster who had murdered his family, and he was forced to witness the birth of his son. It wasn’t fair, but Angel would be damned again before he’d question miracle in his hands.

 

Resigned

The end was nigh. When had had been a little boy in Sunday school and the preacher had told the story of Armageddon, he had always imagined it raining on that last day. Now he stood with a ravening host of Hell before him. Beside him was Gunn, his heart slowing even as he listened but a warrior to the end; Illyria, a Power who had once wielded unthinkable might; and… Spike, but then he couldn’t have everything.

As the rain spattered against the pavement, the champions went to do battle one last time, and the world faded to black.

 

No Rest for the Wicked

Patrol was always slower in the rain. Normally Buffy would complain about her hair going flat, but the vamps had been relentless the last few weeks, so she didn’t mind an easy night.

After the preliminary sweep of the cemeteries, staking only one newbie, she went to the park and sat under a picnic shelter, listening to raindrops spatter against the roof. It was peaceful there, and for a moment she could almost pretend she was a normal girl.

Then, without bothering to turn around, she staked the vampire who had been creeping up behind her. Sighing, she headed home.

 

Rainy Days and Mondays

Another weekend was over, filled with an extra shift at Doublemeat, and a new work week had begun. Buffy dragged herself out of bed and forced herself to shower and dress. She hadn’t patrolled the night before, mainly because she couldn’t work up the energy. Dimly she remembered high school mornings when she had complained about going to class. It sounded like heaven to her now. Anything not her own life sounded like heaven. As she started her walk to work, rain began falling. Not even bothering to level an insult at the offending weather, she headed for her job.

 

Red Rain

Dreams still haunted his days long after the first decades of near-insanity brought on by guilt. In those dreams, he was Angelus again. The setting changed often: great cities and tiny hamlets alike. Sometimes Darla swept along beside him in satin, or Drusilla, grinning madly, danced in shadows, or William strode like a tiger through the dark, but often he was alone. All of the dreams ended the same way: death, countless deaths, a powerful flood of red pouring over him.

He would awaken drenched in sweat, terrified by the pleasure he took in his menace. His dreams betrayed him.

 

January 15, 2006

Bunnies

 

Playmates

“Another martini, Mr. Smith?” the blonde asked in a sultry voice.

“That would be perfect, Darla,” he responded, trying not to drool.

As she minced away to get it, being sure her tail bounced enticingly as she went, she rolled her eyes. Men never, ever changed. Still, it was a decent gig, amusing in its way. The Gentlemen’s Clubs drew a few men with serious money, and she never lacked for tips.

And it she slipped a little something extra in their sidecars, gin fizzes, and martinis, no one could tell if she’d had a bit of a drink, too.

 

Old Acquaintances

“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Spike yelled, making several patrons stare.

“Shut up, you loud-mouthed imbecile,” Darla hissed through a perfectly motionless smile. “You’re going to get thrown out.”

He glanced at the security guards. “Ehm, right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset the lady. She looked like my cousin Mable from Sussex. My mistake,” he said apologetically. They left, then he repeated his question. “You. Here. Why?”

“It’s fun,” Darla said with a wink. “You?”

He looked at the bevy of rabbit-eared, fluffy-tailed beauties around him and sighed. “You even need to ask?”

“Dru dumped you again?”

“Yup.”

 

January 8, 2006

Looking in a Mirror

 

Vacant Reflections

She stands before the glass in her new blue dress, its jet beads clicking together as she rises on tiptoe. All she can see is the room behind her and the dip in the bedcovers where Spike is sprawled, watching her with eyes that are a little worried, a little sad.

“Why can’t I see myself?” she asks, staring into the reflection of the empty room where they both are.

Long ago, people believed mirrors showed a person’s soul, but she knows Daddy’s soul casts no mirror-shadow.

“I don’t know, Pet,” he says quietly.

It’s the only answer there is.

 

Reflections on a Dead Marriage

There had been screaming and door slamming for weeks, but when Hank had finally walked away, it had been in complete silence. Perhaps there was nothing left to say.

Joyce stood in the bathroom and stared in the mirror critically. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman. She was no secretary not quite yet legal to drink, but she’d kept herself up pretty well with two children. There were some faint lines, flaws scattered across her face, but nothing that screamed “old lady.”

As she clicked off the light, she realized that even if she wasn’t perfect, she still didn’t deserve this.

 

Bridal Room

Anya stood before the mirror, still wearing her wedding dress, looking at the girl reflected there. She should be dancing the Funky Chicken right now, watching Xander’s family drink themselves stupid while the demons tried not to wreak vengeance on the humans simply because of proximity, all the while happily anticipating lots of sex with her new husband on their honeymoon.

Instead, there was this strange girl in the mirror, staring back at her with run mascara: pale, sad, and weak. With a deep breath, that sadness turned to anger. Anyanka had never been weak, and never would be again.

 

January 1, 2006

New Beginnings

 

Beginning a Loop

The apocalypse had been averted. Spike laughed into his beer as he tallied up the Armageddons he had helped foil. “More than Angel has” was his pleased total, even if it included saving the world via “keeping Dru amused for eighty years” and “fetching a cranky Slayer chocolate.”

The demons of Wolfram and Hart were gone. He was now a free agent. He was at liberty to do whatever he liked. He was his own boss. He was… already pulling his cell from his duster’s pocket to ring Angel and find out what was up after less than two hours.

 

Paradise of Hell

The Master paced impatiently in his prison. For many decades he had been trapped beneath the earth. Now, at last the night had arrived when the world would begin again with the human filth where they belonged: begging for mercy at his feet.

Collin had been gone long enough. Soon, the Slayer would appear, and her coming would be the start of all that glorious carnage. When dawn came, it would be to a new world. He smiled sharp as a knife’s blade. As he silently slipped into the shadows, he raised an eyebrow appraisingly at the Slayer.

Nice dress.

 

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

Andrew and Jonathon exchanged terrified glances in the cab of the truck. Hitch-hiking seemed like a good idea at the time, Jonathon thought. They needed to leave Sunnydale fast, neither of them had a car, and despite Andrew’s insistence he could hot wire anything, Jonathon wasn’t willing to wait around to see if Willow still wanted to turn them into newts.

At this point, Jonathon hoped they’d survive long enough to cross the boarder. Off to Mexico to begin again. Great; he had to live the rest of his life in a country where all the food made him gassy.

 

September 25, 2005

Fall

 

Silent Season

Angel stared at the closed door of his office. He had succeeded in his quest to erase the day from every memory but his own, but success had never less like a cause for celebration. He felt barren, hopeless, worse than he remembered during the lowest points in the last hundred years.

His thoughts drifted to Northrop Frye and his theory of archetypes, that each season had its own particular type of drama: winter for satire, spring for comedy, summer for romance, and fall for tragedy.

Fittingly, it was November, and Angel wondered if he would ever see summer again.

 

From the Precipice

Some people didn’t fall in love; they stumbled into it or perhaps stubbed their toe against it. Spike wasn’t one of those people. When he fell in love, it was a bit like bungee jumping off the top of Pike’s Peak—without the cord.

His relationship with Buffy had been like that, a perilous descent at insane speeds towards a target that might just kill him if he was able to reach it without being dashed to death on a thousand jagged points first. But then, Spike always pitied the poor sods who never felt the rush of the plunge.

 

Stagnation

In the fields of Iowa, the trees were turning the ruddy shades of the sunset, but not the smallest stirring of change happened in Southern California, or so it seemed. The days were still warm, the sky blue, the breezes sultry. Riley found it unnerving. It was like time had stopped, a perpetual limbo.

He looked at Buffy’s sleeping face on the pillow next to his, and he knew the seasons weren’t the only things that refused to progress. The two of them grew no closer, and he couldn’t stay in limbo forever, even if parts of it were bliss.

 

September 11, 2005

Sunday/Sundae

The Danger of Homonyms

Drusilla often hatched bizarre plans involving insane stunts that had nearly gotten her and Spike staked dozens of times, so when she crept up to him and whispered, “I have an idea,” he tended to shudder.

This time, however, his fears were entirely wrong. She wanted to try AB negative warmed up and poured over chocolate chunk ice cream. It turned out to be absolutely delectable.

“Pet,” he said, licking the bowl of his spoon, “this was brilliant.”

“I got the idea from a song on the radio,” she said, playfully tipping his nose in whipped cream. “‘Sundae Bloody Sundae.’”

 

August 14, 2005

Lullabies

 

Toora Loora Loora

Darkness surrounded Angel in a way he, with his centuries spent far from the light of the sun, had never before experienced. In his underwater coffin, entombed alive, the darkness was palpable, freezing his bones, driving his mind beyond insanity and into a place as dark as the ever-present blackness.

His son had done this to him, and the pain of that was sharp, but he remembered the sweetness of holding that warm little boy to his chest and singing the lullaby his mother had once sung to him. It was the one warmth the cold dark could not touch.

 

All Through the Night

His daughter lay drowsing quietly in his arms, utterly trusting him, believing nothing could be wrong when he was here, singing her cradle song. She was on the verge of being too old for lullabies, but this time she permitted herself the relief the soothing words and gentle rocking gave her.

Holtz was being torn apart as he stared down at the still innocent face of his child, knowing she had never sinned against any living thing, yet she was damned. As the final notes filtered through the tears caught in his throat, he died as surely as she did.

 

All the Pretty Little Horses

Tara knew she was forgetting things: the name of the girl who fed her, the reason they were in this big car going down the road so fast they left trails of dirt like pixie dust. The man across from her wasn’t a pixie, but he smoked in sunlight. Something about that tugged at the back of her mind, but it slipped away.

When she looked out the window and saw horsies following behind them, she clapped and giggled. She liked horsies. She couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed scared of them. They were the only thing that wasn’t scary.

 

Lavender’s Blue

Her husband wouldn’t approve. He would say that his son must never be coddled or his way smoothed out before him, that he must learn from birth to be a strong, impassive director of a series of young, doomed girls. Simple pleasures and pleasantries were not for him.

But it was late at night, and her husband was asleep, probably dreaming of Council reports. She leaned over her little boy’s crib in the stark white nursery, and quietly sang him an old lullaby of nonsense and soft colors, kings and queens, hoping someday Wesley would find a spark of joy.

 

Rozhinkes mit Mandlen

Willow’s grandmother was a sweet, gray-haired little woman with a dowager’s hump, orthopedic shoes, and cat’s eye glasses. When Willow’s parents left to attend philosophical conventions for weeks, it was her bubby who would stay with her and tuck her in at night. It was from her she heard her first lullaby, for Sheila didn’t believe in such nonsense.

“Now sleep, my treasure,” she would say to her with a kiss on the forehead, another new experience, “and tomorrow we’ll make chicken soup together. Yes?”

She would nod happily. They were Willow’s first lessons in the magic of curing herbs.

 

August 7, 2005

Addictions

The Kick

In her time, Faith had tried everything. At eleven she’d conned college boys into getting her booze at the local convience store. Cigarettes started soon after. By the end of her freshman year, she had tried pot, coke, uppers, downers, ecstacy, and heroin. There was only one conclusion she came to about everything she tried.

It all sucked.

Then one May evening when her Watcher rattling on again about honor and duty, she felt a wave of tremendous power wash over her from her toes to the roots of her hair. She’d been called. That power became her true addiction.

 

July 17, 2005

Inanimate Objects

 

New Beginning

The truck from our old world went bumpy-bumpy-bump down a lot of streets before the growling noise stopped and we weren’t moving anymore. It was very dark inside my box, and very crowded, too.

Someone picked up my box and carried us up some stairs and put us down on the floor with a loud thud. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t very dignified. More time passed, and when Girl opened the box up later, it was the dark time outside. I was happy to see her, but when she hugged me to sleep, I could tell she was worried.

 

Missing Girl

I sit on the bed every day and look around the room, waiting for my Girl to come home. I’m a patient piggy, but I’m getting scared that she won’t come back. Girl’s Big One used to come in the room. Sometimes she’d yell, and sometimes she’d cry. I wish she would have hugged me. It might have made her feel better. Maybe it would have made me feel better too. But Girl’s Big One doesn’t come in the room anymore. I think it makes her too sad. So I sit here, alone, and wait for Girl to come home.

 

School Days

Girl has gotten out boxes and is putting her things in them. Her friend Red Fur comes to help, and they talk and giggle and make plans about a place called call-edge. They seem happy, but sometimes Girl looks sad. She’s thinking of her Dark One then. He doesn’t come anymore, so she’s unhappy. I don’t like when Girl is unhappy. I hope call-edge cheers her up.

Just when I think I’m going to be left behind, she pops me in the last box and says, “Everyone needs a good education. Even piggies.” I get to go to call-edge too!

 

Strange Girl

Strange things are happening that nobody seems to notice but me. There’s a new girl living in our house, and she has extra shiny fur. Girl and her Big One are acting really funny about her. It’s like they didn’t notice she just popped out of nowhere, kind of like Girl’s old Jack in the Box. I didn’t like Jack too much. He was kind of scary. Shiny Fur is kind of scary, too. She’s always sneaking into Girl’s room. When she leaves, she stuffs something of Girl’s in her pockets. I hope she doesn’t stuff me in a pocket.

 

Sad Pig

It’s too quiet in my Girl’s room, quieter than it’s ever been before. People come in and out of the room, but they don’t say anything. They cry a lot, though. It makes me scared.

Today, Shiny Fur opened the door and looked around the room for a long time. Then she walked over to the bed and picked me up. She put me under her arm and carried me down the hall to her room. There are lots of stuffed animals here, but when she sleeps, she always hugs me tightest. I think she’s as sad as I am.

 

Sad Girl

Girl was acting strange for a very long time. She didn’t smell right, kind of greasy and icky. She never smiled, and when she talked, sometimes she said mean things. I loved her, but I didn’t know how to help her. I don’t think hugging me is going to do the job.

A few weeks ago, things started to get better, or it seemed like it. Her eyes didn’t look faraway, and she started to smell better: more vanilla and less burnt stuff. But I don’t think she’s really happy. I think she’s pretending. I hope she gets better soon.

 

New Beginning, Take 2

Bumpy-bumpy-bump, I’m back in a box and going for a long drive. This time the truck is bright yellow, the kind Girl used to ride to school in when she was a Little One. Things are quiet for a long time, but then Girl opens up my box and takes me out. It’s the dark time outside. There are lots of girls here, some scared, some sad, and some happy. My Girl looks like she’s had a hard day, but she’s smiling. It’s good to see her smile again.

“Anywhere you go with me, Mr. Gordo, is home.”

I agree.

 

July 3, 2005

 

Independence

 

Independent at 161

When Drusilla was human, she was always an obedient child. But when her second daddy came, she learned sometimes he wanted her to disobey him so he could have the fun of punishing her. Even when she was naughty, she was doing what he wanted. Spike had cherished her like she did her dolls. He liked dressing her up and parading her before other demons, making them jealous. She was his favorite toy.

But now, standing outside his crypt after he nearly killed her, she was alone. She wondered what it would be like to be herself, and she smiled.

 

June 12, 2005

Time Travel

Having It Both Ways

Spike loved the way humans were constantly coming up with something new for him to steal. He had a CD player three years before they became commonplace, even though he still preferred the sound of vinyl. He’d driven his fair share of just-off-the-line Mustangs, Bentleys, and Ferraris, even if his garage contained a DeSoto from the 1960s. In his own way Spike was both a modernist and a traditionalist, playing with the new toys but still holding fast to the old.

“Time travel through technology,” Drusilla had called it, and Spike, for his part, enjoyed being a time traveler immensely.

 

June 5, 2005

Summer/Numbers

 

Odd Slayer Out

L.A. had been home most of Buffy’s life, and now she was back, even if it was only to visit her father. Everything was the same: the malls, the ocean, the sunshine, even most of the faces.

But it made her feel more alone than before, and she knew why. She was the thing that was different. No matter how far she tried to hide from her stupid destiny, it was going to keep tugging her back. Back to Sunnydale. Back to her own death.

She bought a lot of shoes that summer. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Ticket to Nowhere

Buffy didn’t care where the bus was going. She’d bought a ticket for the first one leaving that morning. She knew better than to hope she could leave her pain behind, buried in Angel’s dust-Angel’s, not Angelus’s,-but she couldn’t stay.

If she’d known there was a chance it might happen, he might come back to her… but she hadn’t. It was the final punch in the gut.

She had been disowned by her mother. She had killed her lover. She had been framed for murder. Getting out was the logical step. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Missing Pieces

In the weeks after graduation, Angel’s absence seemed to grow. She couldn’t abandon the hope that some night she’d catch a glimpse of him watching silently in the shadows or quietly studying her from a mausoleum.

She’d lost Faith, though she didn’t see anything else she could have done. It stung. Buffy was again the only Slayer in the world, and as long as Faith’s coma continued, it would remain that way.

Alone. She would always be alone. She went to graduation parties and smiled at the right times and said empty words. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Perfection under a Microscope

Adam was defeated, the First Slayer was gone, the Initiative had pulled out of Sunnydale, and college was over for summer. Buffy had everything she could possibly want.

The nights were warm and peaceful, few demons causing trouble. Everything was exactly as it should be. Nice, happy friends in nice, stable relationships, and her own nice, normal boyfriend.

She remembered Giles complaining that every day was the same in California: too perfect. Despite all the reasons she should be happy, she wasn’t. Buffy could pretend really well, though. She’d gotten good at that. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

(What Should Have Been) The End

More bliss existed here than Buffy had ever felt. Shadows of this happiness had crossed her path briefly in life, maybe when she was little and playing in her backyard on the swings, but the reality of this joy was beyond her wildest yearnings.

She was complete, safe, comforted by what she had done in life for those she loved and those she had never met. Her soul floated in a warm bath of ecstasy, free from responsibilities and horrors, certain everyone was okay. She sighed and let her spirit be at peace. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Returning Home

Sunlight poured from the sky like heaven had been ripped open… again. Buffy tried not to think of that as she walked beside Dawn in the idyllic cemetery, certain Willow wouldn’t destroy the world now.

But things itched at the back of her mind as she took tentative steps towards returning to life. She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing was ever going to be simple again, not that it ever had been. She plastered a smile on her face and wondered how often her mother had done the same without her knowing. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Amore Lite

It was over. They’d won. A future of limitless possibilities ranged before Buffy, or so it seemed for a while before the euphoria wore off. Before, she had been Dawn’s sole support, and the weight of the responsibility was almost crushing. Now, dozens of young girls were looking to her for guidance. She also had no money, no job, and no home.

Italy seemed nicely distant from her former life. She wanted to be frivolous for a while, so when a cute guy named the Immortal asked her to dance, she said yes. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

Numbers 35:24

The library table was littered with books. Willow was sleeping on Oz’s shoulder while Xander unsuccessfully tried keeping himself awake through high-sugar junk food.

Suddenly, the entire group woke as Buffy yelled, “I don’t believe it! I’m in here!”

“You found the prophecy?” Giles said, instantly alert.

“Nope, but I’m in the Bible,” Buffy said, pushing the book towards him.

“’…then the community, deciding the case between the slayer and the avenger of blood…,’” Giles read aloud. “Buffy, this is in reference to someone accidentally killing a person with a rock.”

“So? Still says ‘slayer.’ Right there,” Buffy declared adamantly.

 

May 29, 2005

Memory

 

Memories Lost

Nearly four hundred years have passed since the last time Darla saw sunlight on her skin. In the time that she has been back, she has had too many opportunities for introspection, and what is most disconcerting to her is the hole her previous human life has become. She can remember her vampire self in perfect detail, but not who she was before the Master came. Sometimes she thinks she remembers grass perfumed with heather, the sun dappling a path before her, and her legs, shorter than they are now, running full tilt towards someone, but she cannot remember who.

 

Memories Borrowed

Illyria was not capable of the petty human emotion of nostalgia. She could remember a time so long ago that these worthless beings would be unable to comprehend the valley of centuries between then and now, and she had no doubt she would exist into a future so distant from the present that she would watch galaxies change their courses. Moments meant nothing to her. But they had to the shell: Sunday morning pancakes, first grade spelling bees, songs by the Dixie Chicks, the smell of Wesley’s cologne. Unbelievably, Illyria found it possible to be jealous of the human filth.

 

Memories Stolen

Lethe’s bramble had a clean smell, which makes sense since it wipes the mind free of troubles. Tara stared at the branch that she had pinned to her dress on a whim without taking the time to note what it was. With everything that had been going on, who could blame her?

But now she knew, and it confirmed her worst fears. Willow’s power was starting to overshadow her conscience. As flower lay crumpled in her palm, Tara wondered bitterly if the memory it had stolen from her was as terrible as the realization of what her lover had become.

 

Insubordination

Cordy distinctly remembers not giving Doyle permission to die. He hadn’t asked her before he’d belted Angel, and he sure as hell hadn’t asked before he jumped on the beacon of death and fried. He hadn’t asked her for that kiss either, just taken it and given her the visions as a freebie.

Like most freebies, they sucked.

Cordelia is angry he didn’t ask her first whether he was allowed to die. She would have said no. How dare he give himself to save their lives when she wanted him alive and dating her? How dare he make her cry?

 

Communing with Nature

England was a cool shade of green. Willow had been there weeks before she had been able to recognize that simple difference between Sunnydale, where lawns were unnaturally bright and the sky was so blue that nobody really looked at the grass anyway. Here in the countryside, colors were soft and natural, somehow kind and embracing.

The landscape reminded her of Tara’s soul. Her body might be on the other side of the world, but if she sat beneath an oak after a summer shower, she felt as close to her as she would if she stood beside her grave.

 

Before Her Time

Buffy wasn’t supposed to die. Xander had always accepted he was going to wind up like Jesse, dead from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Buffy was the warrior, the one who could handle herself in battle and would never be stupid enough die.

But she had taken the dive from the tower. He’d seen her do it, and now they were burying her. He remembered the time the Master almost killed her and he’d brought her back. Over her grave, he nodded at Willow. If there was any way he could do it again, he would.

 

Unvarnished

Love had never been part of Wesley’s arrangement with Lilah. Sentimentality had no place in their relationship, if it could even be called that. All he had known was that he was in hell. Was it any wonder he had cleaved to another fallen angel, that they had taken perverse pleasure in one another?

She was dead now, though still in the employ of Wolfram & Hart, somewhere. Their time together wasn’t hearts and flowers, but when he thought of her, he remembered her with something akin to warmth. He often wondered if he was the only one who did.

 

Forced Confrontation

Prison gives people a lot of time to think. Usually, the things they think about are ones they’d rather forget. Faith’s experience in jail was no different. She remembered those she killed, the hatred in Wesley’s eyes, the death-fight with Buffy. She was responsible for those memories, so she accepted their pain.

But when she thought of her mother, she started to feel sick: drug-induced beatings, strange men she had to call Daddy, and death found at the bottom of a bottle. Those memories, ones she didn’t make for herself, haunted her like phantoms of who she could have become.

 

Improved Torture

Talking to Illyria is enough to make Gunn feel nauseous. After he’d left the hell dimension where his heart was ripped out of him day after day, he was led back into the real world.

His heart continues to be ripped out of him every day. Each time he sees Illyria walking through the hallways of Wolfram & Hart, twisting her neck so torturously that he thinks it might snap, he’s reminded it was his greed that killed Fred and replaced her with this abomination. Sometimes he wishes he were back in hell; other times, he thinks he never left.

 

Angel of Death

“Liam!” she giggles, deliriously happy. “I knew you’d be back!”

Angel has relived this scene too many times not to realize he’s dreaming. He tries to wake himself, but as usual it’s no use.

“Sweet Kathy,” says a voice, and he sees himself as he was, “not even death could keep me from my little sister. But would you have me stand on the doorstep until Judgment Day?”

She throws open the door, welcoming Death with open arms. Angel recoils at the memory, guilt welling inside him until he feels he’ll explode. Only then does he wake, sobbing in agony.

 

All Alone in the Moonlight

Eardrums were spontaneously bursting as far away as Fresno, Lorne was certain of it. Still, he managed to keep a smile plastered on his face even if his eyes were squinted in pain. It was some comfort that Angel looked like he was ready to die of embarrassment from having to sing yet again. Thankfully, Wes, Cordy, and Gunn hadn’t come along for the ride.

“That’s enough, Poppa Poptart,” Lorne said, shaking his head to clear the ringing. “I’d say the danger has passed.”

As Angel skulked off stage, Lorne knew he’d never be able to listen to Cats again.

 

Free Account

Spike had never realized a place like this existed on the Internet. For free, unless you wanted to have little pictures with daft sayings on them next to your entries or were a techno-geek and had the desire to monkey with backgrounds and the like, you could write anything you pleased in happy anonymity while still opening it up to the public for perusal and comment.

After he finished reading an erotic and highly descriptive bit of fanfic written about Passions, he hit the “add as memory” button. Yep, he decided. He was going to like LiveJournal a whole lot.

 

Ending It

When they had first come together, Willow had thought their relationship was going to be everything she had ever wanted. Granted, she’d had disappointments in the past. Things hadn’t gone well with some of her other attempts at making things work. But this time, she had been sure she had found the one who would last for years, but sadly, her eyes were drawn lustfully to another, and soon she knew she had to break things off and follow her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said, patting her computer, “but the new model just has so much more memory than you.”

 

April 9, 2005

Rewrite an Episode

 

Reborn

The Master savored the blood of the Slayer as it still clung to his lips. Exulting in his newfound power and freedom, he pondered what should be his first act.

The slumped girl in his arms, apparently lifeless though he could barely hear a heartbeat. She resembled a smashed daffodil, lovely and ruined.

“I believe you deserve a little reward for your generous gift to me,” the Master said in a deadly tone as he slashed his wrist and held it to her mouth. “Perhaps you’re interesting enough to have around for a millenium or two.”

And the stars hid.

 

Swap

Oz and Cordelia watched intently as Willow continued to recite the spell in a language none of them, including the witch, knew. With a final repeated cry, the orb lit brilliantly, and on the other side of town Angel’s eyes filled with matching light.

“That was kinda neat,” Cordy said, looking at Willow.

“Yeah,” she replied, a strange smile spreading across her face. “Yeah, I think I might be able to get used to a body like this.”

“Huh?”

Oz caught the change in scent, but it was too late. Angelus’s transported demon cracked their necks in a single blow.

 

What a Waste of TNT

The Mayor was annoyed. Snyder stared up at him, blathering on about order, about “his school,” and the giant snake rolled its eyes in weariness. Happily, the situation could be remedied easily enough. The snake opened its jaws wide and consumed the principal in a single bite, swallowing him whole before looking for the Slayer.

But Snyder did not seem to be going down smoothly. The demon began to roll around on the ground in agony before it died.

“Well, I’ll be,” Giles said, kicking the corpse. “Snyder did have one virtue.”

“What?” Xander asked.

“He was a choking hazard.”

 

Forgotten Dreamer

Joyce frowned in her sleep. In her dream, she walked down the driveway of the home she and Hank had bought shortly after Buffy was born, but the picket fence was all wrong.

“Why is it painted red?” she said aloud, reaching out to touch the sharpened wooden slats.

“It’s a good color,” Buffy said from behind her. Joyce turned to look at her. She was three years old at most, and she was holding a tiny wooden stake dripping blood.

While her back was turned, a matching stake pierced Joyce’s heart from behind.

“No family,” grunted the First Slayer.

 

Sacrificial Offering

Dawn was bleeding. She could feel it soaking through the sacrificial dress, running over the ends of her toes. Buffy had come. She’d never really doubted that she would. She listened to her sister’s final message to her friends, her declaration that this was what she had to do, that she was fine, telling her to live.

The dive from the tower seemed to shake the fabric of the universe, and Dawn remained watching.

When at last the body hit the pavement below, she smiled.

“Mission accomplished,” she said. “Now for stage two. I’ll be a god in no time.”

 

Too Great a Risk

Xander cradled Willow in his arms. He could feel the moment when the darkness left her, the second when what he held ceased to be a vessel of pure darkness and became his friend again. He remembered holding her like this before so many times: in grade school when the others had picked on her, in those moments stolen from Oz and Cordy, when Buffy had died. He’d always held her.

“I’m so sorry, Will,” he whispered, “but there’s something I have to do.”

When the knife pierced her throat, there was nothing but the smallest cry before she died.

 

Happily Ever After

The Scoobies had passed their moment of joy following the closing of the Hellmouth, but now they realized their number was sadly diminished. There had been several who hadn’t lived to see the victory. Spike was gone; Amanda was gone; and half of a couple was left mourning one who had not survived. The others tried to say things in tribute, but there was only one who really spoke from her heart.

“Personally,” Anya said as she patted Willow’s shoulder while the bus drove away from the pothole that had been Sunnydale, “I never liked Kennedy. You can do better.”

 

March 6, 2005

Animal

Television Therapy

They watch TV a lot. It’s a way of being with Dawn without having to talk. That’s good, because talking inevitably leads to someone saying Buffy’s name, and neither of them wants to deal with the hole she left.

So they watch TV. Anything. Everything. _Masterpiece Theatre _and _the Dukes of Hazard_. _Felicity_ and _Seinfeld___. Whatever will fill the void a bit.

One day, as Spike watches her in the flickering light, he knows she’s healing. Animal, the crazed Muppet drummer, is in the midst of a classic smash-and-trash music session accompanied by cries of “WOMAN! WOMAN!”

And she smiles.

 

January 23, 2005

Noise and Quiet

Revelation

The utter absence of sound that has infected Sunnydale unnerves her more than anything else in her life. Olivia had expected to have a pleasant weekend with Rupert. Instead, an almost otherworldly sense of foreboding hangs over her head. According to him, it is not her imagination, but she can’t quite bring herself to believe it yet. Still, she can’t sleep, and she decides to venture towards the kitchen to make some hot milk.

A glance outside the window and a scream that passes her lips in an explosion of silenced terror turn her world permanently topsy-turvy. Nightmares are real.


End file.
